House of Swords
by Primal Arc
Summary: Most people come to Holyhead for cheap laughs and cheaper thrills. Most of them get to leave. Ash Fletcher is not most people. In a port built on blood money and sacrifice, where the sea hides secrets best left forgotten, the dead can be hard to find. The truth, harder still. How much is he willing to sacrifice to save his father's soul?
1. Prologue: What We Do With Rulebreakers

**Author's Summary:** House of Swords is a FNAF fanfic strongly influenced by HP Lovecraft, particularly Shadow over Innsmouth, and Dishonored. Expect dark themes, creepy magic and demonic entities. AU, contains OCs, no sexual content but there may be some minor fluff and pairings. Starts slow but snowballs later on.

 **Genre:** Dark fantasy

 **Rating:** M, for gruesome violence, disturbing themes and a lot of swearing.

 **Author's Note:** I originally started this for NaNoWriMo 2015 and it's grown into a very different and vicious beast since. I also do a lot of concept art for this story which you can see on my Deviantart or Tumblr, and the final, fully edited story will be illustrated. I hope you like it! I'd love to hear what you think.

* * *

It was a minute to midnight on a Thursday evening, but time meant nothing to mechanical hearts.

They loomed from the dark, unseeing, unfeeling, false smiles branded onto faces that glinted in all the cracks and gaps. They cared not for the little kingdom which lay at their feet, nor for the brightly coloured balloons, the streamers, or the tables bedecked in hats and folded napkins. Instruments hung from limp hands, forgotten. There were no children to sing for, now, and that was all they were meant to do.

But in the silence they found new purpose. As the clock struck midnight, the summoning hour, and the shadows began to shift in impossible ways in the moonlight, those darkest of all crept towards the figures on the stage. They shivered as it trickled like ink from their joints, from their jaws, from those gaps in their masks where machinery clacked and chattered. Plastic eyes snapped open and stared up the shadow hanging over them, at the claws that reached out to run over their faces.

He always came back. He always came here to free them. And as the talons took hold of the bolts nailed through their feet into the stage and tore them loose, they knew their true purpose.

It was time to hunt.

* * *

 **PROLOGUE**

WHAT WE DO WITH RULEBREAKERS

* * *

 _'I'm still here._

 _I'm still waiting._

 _And I will take back what you stole from me.'_

Jones bolted from a dreamless stupor and into the desk, knocking his hip flask to the floor with a clatter. He clutched at a work shirt stretched too tight over his belly, as if to make certain that his heart was still there, that it hadn't been carried off bleeding in the claws of a night terror—that he was, in fact, alive. It beat a staccato beneath his palms.

What the hell—was that a voice? He waited and listened with pricked ears and bated breath, but no answer made itself known. It was nothing, just imagined words conjured by a weary mind... he needed another drink.

Pain exploded in his knees where he smashed them against the drawers as he bent to retrieve the flask, cleverly disguised as a wallet, and drained it of its last mouthful. He considered the dark circle spreading across the carpet with distaste. Damn, he smuggled that in right under Nye's nose, and a sharp nose it was; there was no way he would miss the stench. Rats scrambled for cover as he heaved the desk and all its contents ever so slightly to the right to conceal the evidence, a temporary fix at best. Huffing and puffing and smearing the last of the sleep from bleary eyes, he peered over the jumble of monitors, out through the service window that overlooked the pizzeria's foyer. He found only crumpled scraps of paper chasing each other around the tiles in the breeze.

Something banged in the kitchen. There were always noises in the pizzeria after hours; even now he could hear the creak of walls swelling in the heat, the knocks and bangs and tippity-tip-taps of what he could only assume were pipes and adventurous rats. Doors would slam on their own, even on calm nights. But this was too loud and too sudden to be a rat.

Seating himself once more with a creak of plastic and straining buttons, he clicked through the camera feeds, raisin eyes screwed up tighter still against the glare. Nye only left his little nest in the manager's office when he needed to tell him off and the animatronic band members weren't going hunting for snacks any time soon; the technician bolted them to the stage every evening after closing for reasons he had never cared to ask. He knew better than to poke his nose where it didn't belong.

No one asked questions at Freddy's.

Cameras 6A and B, which overlooked the two doors into the kitchen, were both clear of unwanted visitors, though not of mess. There were pans scattered across the floor. Either the new kitchen hand had stacked things too high again or someone just passed through. His gut, warm with whiskey, told him it was the latter.

Camera 2B, clear, camera 2A, clear, camera 1C...

The mascots perched high on the show stage cast their gaze, their stick figure shadows, over the tables below. They were thick, ungainly things, clutching with sausage fingers at instruments three sizes too small, but their eyes were gleaming and alive and most certainly watching him. The way those gap-toothed maws leered up at him through the cameras every night sent chillflesh shivers scuttling under his skin.

But tonight there were only two shadows, two pairs of plastic eyes. A conspicuous space yawned on the right of the stage where the third ought to be.

His fingers were clumsy on the office phone as he dialled extension four. With his sleeve, he swiped at pools of sweat that had gathered in the pocks of his forehead. The result was little more than a film of grease but it kept his free hand from drumming on the desk.

"Hello... oh, hello?"

"It's gone," Jones gasped into the receiver, "just _gone!"_

"I... what? Jones, is that you?"

"T—the duck animatronic, I think someone broke in and stole it!"

The silence was palpable as Nye absorbed this unwelcome news. Even over the line, Jones could hear his frown, the pursing of his lips. "She's a chicken," he said at last.

Really? Was that all that concerned him? "I don't care what 'she' is! We need to do something before—"

"She wasn't stolen, either," said Nye, with the sort of forced patience a teacher might use to explain something to a misbehaving child, "do you think someone could move a half ton robot that quickly?"

"It can't just get up and walk off on its own!"

"Heh." Was that a laugh, or a sigh? "Okay, here's what I want you to do. Get up and go to the door—but stay on the line—then bolt it closed. The automated door bars you were asking me about the other night? Use them."

"But—"

"Then you need to sit yourself down at that computer, find Chica on the cameras and keep an eye on her. I'm coming over, I'll explain everything. But you have to stay on the phone and tell me exactly where she is if you want to get through this, all right?"

"I..."

"Jones?"

He hung up.

Well, he figured that a desk dwelling hermit like Nye would be eccentric, but this? _This?_ Was this some kind of joke? No... the night manager was completely out of his tree.

A plate smashed in the kitchen and he made his decision. Easing himself from his chair and onto unsteady feet, he reached for his tactical flashlight where it lay upon the desk. Its weight felt good in his hand—strong, American made, nice and heavy. He left the twig of a baton he was issued with on the desk where it belonged and padded to the door, ears sharp, eyes darting to every shadow. It was only a short walk up the corridor; he could hear pots and pans clanging together even from here. As he crept closer to the steel door its porthole, like a single round eye, fixed him with a solemn gaze.

It was buckled and hanging from its hinges.

He tripped and windmilled on his heels at a flash of movement in the dark, knocking a wheeze from his chest when his back hit the wall. His hands fumbled on the handle of his flashlight. "S—stop! Stay back!" But it was nothing more than the stray lid of a saucepan rolling towards him on its rim, flashing in the beam as it wobbled, tipped, then clattered flat onto the tiles with a clash like cymbals.

The rattling in the kitchen stopped; hiding, he guessed, now that he lacked the element of surprise. He cursed himself for jumping at shadows and nudged open what was left of the door, waiting with held breath for an attack, for the scuffle of feet. Only when he had counted to ten without incident did he edge his way into the space beyond.

In this windowless room there was no light, no sound, save for his own. The absence of the usual creaks and groans felt unnatural, like the shadows themselves held their breath, watching, waiting, and in spite of himself he felt goosebumps rippling under his arm hair. His circle of light danced over stainless steel countertops and scattered cookware. The odour of vinegar and sour milk seared at his nostrils, mixed in with something... wet, and coppery? He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "I—is someone there?" He called, flicking the light this way and that, taking in the sauce splattered from a dozen broken bottles, the discarded cutlery, the thick red smear along the nearest counter. Chef Hughes would be livid when he found the mess in the morning.

Something crunched underfoot. Lifting one shoe, he saw that it was a rat, half of one, its forequarters bitten clean off. Tatters of muscle and viscera clung to the sole. The work of an alligator? No... something worse.

Eyes bored into his back, burning wherever they touched. So, so much worse.

 _'You took him away from me.'_

A whisper, dead like the rustle of dry leaves, like the snap of the bones beneath his boots. Hot breath fanned over him, reeking of decay, of that sickly copper smell that lingered on the countertops.

Blood.

He spun on his heel and his light caught a towering figure, as wide as it was tall, and a flash of yellow felt matted with grime. He only glimpsed its eyes for a moment, but they were hollow, soulless.

In them he saw a promise of death.

His feet scrabbled for purchase on tiles slick with guts and spilt water until his shoulder hit steel. Pain blossomed beneath the skin. Behind him, where he stood a split second before, the thing barrelled into the counter and sent its contents cascading to the floor. It turned on him, nightmare teeth gnashing behind its beak, each a razor slicked with crimson.

"H—hey ki—ki—SKR—kids! SCKRK—K—K."

Wasn't the door broken? His panicked mind reeled—someone tried to lock him in here! Gritting his teeth, he slammed the warped metal once, twice more, throwing everything he had into each blow. Finally it swung free of its frame and he tumbled into the corridor. He didn't stop, he didn't think; he was scrambling for the exit before he even had time to breathe. Another shadow stepped out into the archway that separated him from the front entrance, blocking his main route of escape. Turning, he found a third behind him, crouching in the hallway that led outside to the service alley. It was a trap right from the start.

Back to the wall, he slid along its length, eyes never leaving those monsters in the dark. Something clattered to his right and the animatronic fox lurched out of the door that led to the manager's office, papers crumpling underfoot, its jaws snapping open and closed. It leered at him with bright pinprick eyes and fangs that flashed gold in the torchlight. As if in slow motion he saw its knees bend, its heels rise, the inner workings of its legs coil and spring. He saw its mouth stretching wide, wide enough to swallow him whole.

It was going to pounce.

A flurry of movement and thundering feet told him the rest were closing in. But they were too late, now; the office was at his back, a step away from relative safety.

His nails scrabbled against the closed door.

No, no no no! The light was on in the window; he remembered flicking it off when he went to investigate the noises in the kitchen. With all the animatronics accounted for, there was only one person who could be in there.

"Nye! For god's sake, open the damn door! Please!"

Piledriver arms slammed into his back, knocking the breath from his body and the flashlight from his hands. He felt his ribs splinter and he hit the floor—hard. One arm took the brunt of his weight with a snap and twisted beneath him at the wrong angle, his hand forced around in a direction it was never meant to go. With the other he scrabbled for the light, for anything he could use to protect himself, but as his fingers wrapped around the plastic a clawed foot stomped down and crushed both like an empty soda can. His scream tore from cracked, bleeding lips. A massive hand, each finger as thick as his wrist, clamped around him and wrenched him from the tiles. Light from the window glinted on pointed teeth. Between them, he saw gristle and strands of hair caught in the mechanisms inside.

 _'Where is he?'_

He heard the grating and clicking of mechanical footsteps as the others circled him, felt the air displaced by their bulk, a cruel mockery of the ocean breeze that whispered just beyond the walls. When they spoke, they spoke as one, the words slithering like oil from their teeth, from the holes where their eyes were supposed to be—it stank of rot and death.

 _'WHERE IS HE?'_

"I... I don't kno—"

Its hand tightened around his chest until it crumpled, shredding his lungs with shards of bone and reducing his cries to a gurgle. Droplets of blood flecked the fox's jagged smile. "Y—ye broke the rules l—landlubber, a—an—and do you know wha—what we do with rulebrea—breakers here at F—Freddy's?"

The shutters in the office window clattered down. In the trickle of light that remained, teeth flashed as vast jaws cranked open.


	2. Chapter One: Go Set a Watchman

"H—hello... uh, hey Ashley. It's, uh, been a long time. A... while ago I promised an old friend I'd stay in touch, but... you probably don't even remember me. Too little, too late. But better late than never, right?"

 _Bang, bang, bang._

"Uh... well, things have been rough and I was thinking of taking off some of the leave I have stockpiled, so maybe if I find myself in New York soon we could, uh, catch up?"

 _BANG!_

"I—I have to go, but give me a call if you want to talk! Goodbye!"

 _Click._

* * *

 **CHAPTER ONE**

GO SET A WATCHMAN

* * *

He wasn't sure what he expected to find when he went looking for Freddy's. Was it nostalgia? Or perhaps catharsis, a release from the chains of the past, like stripping the bandages from an old wound. Maybe he was looking for a purpose, a sense of belonging... it wasn't just good fortune that led him here when the pizzeria was hiring.

He didn't believe in coincidences.

The wind ran playful fingers through Ash's hair as he mounted the last of the steps cut into the seawall. This was the taller of the two concrete barriers, something he took note of with a glance over his shoulder; they divided the industrial port of Holyhead into neat tiers like a wedding cake decorated with little model rooftops. The setting sun lit the sea ablaze below him, molten glass shimmering in kiln fire red, in orange and amber and rose.

Outside the pizzeria, crimson leaves drifted one by one from the maple swaying in a raised bed, dancing past him like embers in the breeze. He reached out and one came to rest in his palm. From its branches hung dozens of glass bottles, clinking softly together in the beginnings of a melody. The mechanical bear perched on the edge of the roof waved down at him with its top hat to cheer him on, gears clunking as the arm and mouth ground up and down, open and closed. He didn't feel much better, but appreciated the effort.

This was it, then. This was the place, this was Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

It was... smaller than he thought it would be. Nor was it much to look at, a squat box with two bay windows glittering like a pair of spectacles, done up in a shade of purple that made his eyes water. If there was one thing he expected, it was for some unseen piece of him to fall back into place when he came here. Though it looked exactly as it did in all the photos, there was no connection, no resurfacing of half-buried memories. Had it really been so long?

He pocketed the maple leaf, for good luck, and kicked his way through the others scattered in piles across the car park. One last flight of steps and he was at the door, peering through the glass at the vacancy notice taped to the other side, identical to the one scrunched in his grip.

 _HELP WANTED!_

 _Family pizzeria unexpectedly short staffed and looking for responsible persons to fill late shifts. Positions available:_

 _COOK—End of day clean up, checking stock and orders, preparing dough starters for following day. 4pm-10pm, Tues-Sat._

 _SECURITY GUARD—Monitor premises, ensure safety of personnel and equipment. 12am-6am, Mon-Fri. Additional hours negotiable._

 _To apply call 1-888-FAZ-FAZBEAR_

 _Freddy Fazbear's Pizza: Where Fantasy and Fun Come to Life!_

As long as he didn't do anything stupid he had this job in the bag; Mr. Johnson made that clear over the phone. Okay, he could do this... just breathe in, breathe out and go. He tugged it open and slid inside.

As the door clicked shut, the sunlight threw his shadow out in front of him like a long, dark banner. He tried to picture it, too, waving and offering him words of encouragement as his footsteps echoed uncomfortably on chequered tiles. Though it closed hours ago, the place still hummed with an unseen energy, a machine that ticked and turned just below the surface. He heard echoes of laughter and bustling crowds. Countless memories lingered here within these walls, little marks left like handprints by all the children who had come and gone, and though he searched none of them were his. That sense of vague disappointment lingered, like he had wandered somehow into the wrong building and this wasn't Freddy's at all.

There was no one at the front desk, but set into the wall to its right was a mirrored service window. He shuffled forwards, wanting nothing more than to slide back through the door the way he came, out into the wind and the smell of salt and sea. With a tap of his knuckles on the glass, it slid open to reveal a round-faced woman with sour, downturned lips, a purple cap marked 'security' perched atop her bob of frizzy hair. Her eyes raked down his body, sharp with disapproval. Suddenly, he felt all too conscious of the way his suit hung in great, baggy folds from his shoulders. The newspaper crackled in his grip but it did little to soothe his nerves. "U—um hi, I—I'm here for the job. Uh, could I speak to Mr. J—"

Her expression didn't change. "Do I look like customer service to you?"

"But—"

Ignoring him, she snatched the office phone from its cradle on her desk and punched in a combination. Her voice growled over the PA system: "Jeremy to the front desk, that's Jeremy to the front desk. Thank you." With one last glare, she slammed the window in his face.

He tripped over his own feet scrambling to put some distance between himself and her. The benches by the door were in her line of sight so he chose instead to hover by the counter, cheeks burning pink. What now? Was he supposed to wait here in the lobby for someone to come and get him? Should he try and find Mr. Johnson on his own? Thankfully, the sound of scurrying feet made that decision for him.

"Oooh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" A boy his age or younger burst through the star-spangled archway beyond the counter, splattered from head to toe in something that looked an awful lot like blood. He doubled over, dark skin beaded with sweat, his shoulders heaving from what must have been a mad sprint from one end of the building to the other. "So the guys dropped a whole delivery of tomato paste all over the floor and it's up the walls too and I have to clean it up and—and—it's madness! How—huff—how can I help?" His smile flashed white like his name badge; 'Jeremy'.

While Ash scrambled for the words he wanted, a quick brush against Jeremy's mind told him that he was a serial prankster, held in check only by the security guard watching from behind her window. Even this brief connection made it clear that their opinion of her was very much alike. He cleared his throat. "I'm here about the job. Uh, security guard?"

At once Jeremy stood bolt upright like there were wires in his spine and springs in his feet, his face brightening in sudden understanding. "Ooh, you're Ashley Fletcher! Haha, you're, like, _totally_ the talk of the pizzeria right now—but please don't tell the skipper I said that. I'll go tell him you're here. Um, why don't you like sit down or something while you wait?" He eyed him, expecting some form of response, then followed his gaze to the window beside the counter. Shooting him a look of deepest sympathy, he disappeared back through the archway from whence he came.

He felt the stillness pressing in around him, felt its breath like a living, thinking creature. It reached for him with crooked shadow fingers cast by the maple outside. Under normal circumstances he preferred the company of silence but this was one tense with dread, with something he couldn't describe, an otherness that slipped out of reach as he felt blindly for it within the walls. He shivered at the prickling of its eyes, dozens of them, on his skin.

 _"Ashley."_

That voice... it felt so familiar, tugging gently at his memories as it whispered by his ear. The air shifted beside him, as if something there had moved, but he didn't need to look to know that he was alone.

 _"Come."_

The newspaper crumpled from slackened fingers to the floor. Before he could stop himself, he traced the scarlet of Jeremy's footprints though the archway and into the corridor beyond. There was a golden arrow mounted on the wall opposite; 'Main Hall' it teased, pointing to the left, compelling him to abandon all sense and press onwards. His feet obeyed without question.

He had to know for sure that this was the place.

Something pricked at his fingers; bright sequins in silver and gold, and stars cut from foiled card. He blinked and found himself at the second archway—when did that happen? The arrow seemed so far away when he glanced back over his shoulder. Still the silence beckoned to him from the shadows and, powerless to resist, he let it tug him by the strings of his heart through the threshold and into the hall, into the lingering warmth of fresh pizza.

It wasn't vast by any stretch of the imagination, maybe the size of two classrooms joined together, and packed with empty tables as far as the eye could see. Chairs huddled together like forgotten children. Where the honeyed touch of the evening sun struggled to reach, violet walls melted into smooth, inky blackness. A loose amphitheatre of plastic garden chairs faced the stage at the far end of the room, its curtain swept to one side.

There they stood, larger than life, the last rays of sunlight glittering in their eyes in a way that seemed almost... real. Even after all these years he could still remember their names: Freddy Fazbear, ever dapper in his top hat and bow tie, Bonnie the guitar-toting rabbit, and, of course, Chica the chicken, cupcake sitting on a platter in one hand.

His lips trembled, a smile in name only. These weren't the robots he loved as a child. This wasn't the place he remembered.

This wasn't the place that took his father from him.

At last the sun plunged into its watery grave, taking with it his sinking heart, and the light faded from their eyes. Slowly, Freddy turned. That stare met his own, dark, intelligent, _alive._

 _"You came home."_

Though his instincts screamed at him to stop, to turn away his gaze before it was too late, before he, too, lost himself in this place, something in those eyes pulled him in like a moth to a flame. Closer and closer he crept until its heat burned away his wings.

"Mr. Fletcher?"

At once the spell was broken; he shook his head and Freddy's vacant stare was fixed on the far wall as it should be. Blinking the smog from his eyes, he glanced behind him at the speaker and took note of his freshly laundered suit and crisp salmon tie. This was obviously the man in charge. He was short and round, shiny, like a bowling ball. Perspiration beaded on his balding dome. Though Ash was shorter still, he somehow managed to look up at him rather than down—it was clear that he made him nervous.

Mr. Johnson cleared his throat, gesturing with thick fingers to the stage. "They're, ah, wonderful aren't they? The kids love them." His voice had a nasal, droning quality that Ash disliked.

His eyes found Freddy's once more. Fully articulated at the joints and at two places in the spine, complete with expressive faces and moving ears, and capable of walking independently under their own power... yes, they were wonderful. But the thought of the old robots lying in pieces in a scrapyard somewhere made something in his heart ache.

The man coughed again, uneasy at his silence, and hitched up a twitching smile as he extended a hand. "I'm Johnson, the owner. Just Johnson thank you. We spoke over the phone? You... interviewed quite well."

That was a lie; Ash didn't even need his powers to know that. He had fallen apart into a stammering mess as soon as he took the call. But Johnson was desperate, he could see that in his frightened, darting eyes, in the way he fidgeted with his clipboard. Nevertheless, he appreciated the attempt to make him feel better. "N—nice to meet you in person, sir." He hesitated before he shook his hand; it was slippery. At once the man's greed and insecurities crowded into his head, clamouring for attention, and he squirmed at his touch. The moment his grip loosened he wriggled free. Ugh.

"You're... earlier than I expected. That's just the sort of enthusiasm our team needs! If you come along to my office, we have your contract ready and some paperwork you need to sign."

We?

Ash fell into step behind him, less than enthusiastic about this prospect. More managers meant more handshakes and he'd had quite enough of those for one day. He felt cold, dead eyes on his back as they passed once more through the archway, but snuggling deeper into his blazer did nothing to stop the chill slithering over his skin.

"Ashley!"

Past the kitchen and down a corridor to the left, Jeremy was hard at work scrubbing at tomato paste that had set like glue onto the tiles. Haggard but still smiling as bright as ever, he waved from his spot on the floor. "Sooo you're new in town, right? Like, pizza's on the house for staff, you should totally join me for lunch sometime" He paused at the sound of raised voices from further down the hallway and his smile faltered. "Uh, and you might want to watch out for Louise... she's... she's not in a good mood today."

Johnson frowned, resembling a cartoon moon from a children's book. "Yes, very good Fitzgerald. Please get back to work."

"Aye aye captain!"

"He's just a boy! How can you expect him to handle this?"

Ash ducked his head as those voices grew louder and louder; they were definitely talking about him. This was the last thing he needed.

"He's an adult perfectly capable of making his own decisions and deserves to be treated as such. He's got skills, a master's degree..."

"Yeah, in _robotics!_ Apprentice him to me, don't sit him in that chair. God knows I could use the help. You can't just—"

"I don't have a choice. We need someone to watch the cameras and people aren't queueing up for the position any more."

"Gee, I wonder why! So when are you planning to tell him?"

"I can't—Louise!"

A woman burst from a door at the very end of the corridor, bubblegum pink hair in disarray, her overalls tied around her waist. "No, fuck you! That's bullshit! Come talk to me when you're done makin' excuses."

Ash stumbled as she shouldered her way past him without so much as a glance, turning just in time to catch a glimpse of eyes wet with tears. "H—hey!" But she had already disappeared around the corner and with a slam of the rear exit she was gone.

"Our animatronic technician," said Johnson in a small voice, "she's... vocal with her opinions." He tugged open a polished wooden door with 'MANAGER' spelled out on it in brass capitals; someone had stuck a post-it note with an 's' scrawled on it at the end. Loose sheets of paper scrunched underfoot as Ash scuttled into the room as close to the wall as possible. He crinkled his nose; the place stank of coffee and instant noodles.

Humming in the corner on a cabinet buried under paperwork was a steel fan, which did little to ease the sticky heat rolling in from the marshes. There were two desks in the room, one occupied by what, at first glance, appeared to be a scarecrow. His hooked nose was pressed almost to paper as he toiled over his own stack of forms. He spared them only a brief glance as Johnson shut the door behind him. "I suppose you heard all that. Mary called in sick, by the way, she won't be coming in for the next two days. I already arranged for Smith to fill in for her." His voice matched his features, quiet, composed; he didn't sound like he was from Louisiana.

It was a voice Ash recognised, he realised with a frown. It had been a month since he received that bizarre message in the small hours of the morning and it still made him feel uneasy.

"Oh, good." Johnson's eyes flickered to where Ash stood, hiding in a shadow where he hoped no one would notice him. "Fletcher, this is Eric Nye, the night manager here and my second in command. You'll be working with him."

There was a wary edge in the man's eyes that told him that he was thinking of that call, too. The dark circles etched beneath them creased upwards in a carefully pleasant smile as he offered a hand. "A pleasure."

Ash dodged his gaze. There was a spark there like flint hitting steel, the glint of a blade. In it he saw a sharp, calculating mind that was measuring him up and cutting him down. His eyes landed on a framed photo placed neatly beside a vintage desk lamp and his heart stopped in his chest.

That was dad, smiling next to a younger Nye as they clinked glasses of beer together in some celebration lost to the past. His face was just how he remembered it, slender and fey, his grin glinting with untold mischief, eyes bright and piercing and starlight blue, just like his own.

For a moment, it felt as through the printed image was staring right at him.

Still Nye waited, expression unwavering, hand extended. "Normally people shake hands when they meet," he added, a hint of mirth tweaking the smile into one that looked genuine. In that moment, years fell away from his face, "or is that 'uncool' to you kids these days?"

Ash bit back a retort as his cheeks flushed an ugly puce and he shuffled forwards to accept the handshake. This time he made sure to brace himself for the inevitable; there was no telling what might slip through the cracks from one mind to another and he refused to be caught off guard again.

But there were no painful memories, no worries prying into his skull with cold, reaching fingers; Nye's mind was a fortress. Never before had he encountered someone he couldn't read like an open book. Fascinated, he searched those walls for cracks, for weaknesses, finding none. How did he learn to do this?

"This is the part where you let go," said Nye, his smile growing broader still. He was toying with him. "Why don't you take a seat?"

It wasn't a question. Ash wrenched his hand free, clutching it to his chest—his grip was much stronger than he'd expected—and slunk into the one set out for him in front of his desk. It wasn't very comfortable.

Nye's gaze settled on Johnson and softened. "I can take it from here. Now get out of here and get some sleep, you look dead on your feet."

Johnson offered a weak smile in return. "And you don't? All right, take care of yourself. I'll see you tomorrow."

As tired footsteps retreated up the hallway and into the night, Nye made a show of adjusting his glasses and leafing through his paperwork. He selected four sheets from the pile, straightened them with a tap upon the desk, then set them neatly in front of him before folding his long fingers together. Pale scars crossed back and forth across them. "Right, Ashley, before we start I'd like to lay out some ground rules. Rule number one; by day I'm second in command, but once those doors lock I'm captain of this ship. Night staff are my responsibility so what I say goes, understand?"

Ash straightened his back in a salute. "Y—yessir!"

Nye's lips quirked. "You're outpacing your predecessor already. Rule number two; don't call me 'sir'."

"Only if you don't call me Ashley." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Startled eyes met for a moment and though Nye raised his eyebrows, there was no anger in his expression. He blushed, shrinking under his gaze, and stared instead at a stray receipt on the carpet. It stared back accusingly.

"You prefer Ash?"

"Yes... uh, please."

"If that's what you want. That brings me to the third rule; respect your colleagues." His eyes were warm as he smiled down at him over the desk. "That one goes for both of us. Now, I _was_ planning on talking over your CV and pointing out what makes you a good fit for the role, but... as I'm sure you overheard, it wouldn't be entirely truthful. Don't judge her too harshly." He glanced away and down at his hands, at the scars cut deep into the skin, and his lips pressed into a thin, pale line. "she just doesn't want you to get hurt."

Ash's nails dug into his knees. "If you don't mind me asking, just how many violent break-ins are you expecting me to deal with?"

"Well, I'm sure you've heard the stories. With a reputation like this... more than none. Here, your contract," he held out the forms he had separated from the pile; his arm was so long that Ash didn't have to stand to take them, "and your NDA."

A non-disclosure agreement? _Here?_ He took it with trembling hands, unsure what to think or say. It listed all sorts of scary-sounding consequences if he failed to keep his silence—but it would take more than threatening legalese to stop him now, and mom had beaten a dozen different ways of worming out of these into his head. He didn't tell her where he was going, or who he was looking for... but he had a feeling she knew regardless. She wouldn't have let him go if he said goodbye. He signed the forms and passed them back without a word.

"No complaints? Good, that makes things easy. Right, let's get your uniform and locker sorted then I'll show you where you'll be working." Nye's smile was wry, almost bitter, as he stood and pushed back his chair. "Welcome to Freddy's."

It felt more like he should have said 'welcome back', Ash thought. He was meant to be here. This wasn't the place he remembered... but something here remembered _him._


	3. Chapter Two: The First Night

**CHAPTER TWO**

THE FIRST NIGHT

* * *

"I think this one should—oh."

Nye had turned the stockroom upside down in search of a uniform for his newest recruit. The shelves were empty, their contents strewn across the floor to gather dust and dead beetles. Upon digging a shirt tagged 'XS' out of the heap and holding it against Ash's chest, he found that it was still too big. It was also unflattering.

Ash eyed it with distaste, for once unable to find a word in his vocabulary that would describe everything that was wrong with it. The lurid purple, the cheap cut and fabric... he tallied in his head how much it would cost to have it altered. He was going to be a favourite with the local tailor. "I... it's... that's it? That's all you have?"

He wasn't sure what was worse—being trapped with a stranger in a tiny closet, or having to wear _that._

"This is indeed the smallest of the small, I'm afraid. You'll survive until I order a new one." Nye's smile, awkward, an attempt at an apology, was quick to become a frown when he saw that Ash was still staring at it. "Oh come on, it's not that bad. You don't hear Jeremy complaining and he's the most vain person I know."

Jeremy is a loose cannon missing a few screws and replaced your instant coffee with gravy powder, Ash fumed, but bit his tongue and nodded in response. He wasn't about to become a snitch.

"Hold this." He threw the shirt into Ash's arms, ignoring his offended squawk, and tore a drawer clean from the wall and upended it onto the floor. "Darn, where did they put the hats?"

"But..."

"You can't not have a hat. _All_ the guards wear hats. Even dear Beatrice."

"I—if you say so."

"I do. It might even suit you. Ah, voilà!" He spun on his heel and clapped a peaked cap, also purple, onto Ash's head, only to look crestfallen when it slipped down over his eyes. "...I'll order a smaller one of those, too. Now go put those on while I clean all this up."

Ash shot him a glare from under the visor as he picked his way over the debris and out of the room. His new locker key jingled between his fingers as he searched the rows for number eighteen. Its previous owner was still imprinted on it: an absent-minded lady called Marilyn, currently on extended maternity leave. The locker smelled of baby powder once he forced it open. He sighed as he wriggled out of his suit and stuffed it inside, wondering what nickname his colleagues would bestow on him after this series of small embarrassments.

" _Ashley."_

That was behind him—right in his ear. He flinched and slammed an elbow into the door with a bang. But of course there was nothing there, nothing but plastic-covered tables scattered with crumbs and the year's employees of the month frowning down at him from their frames upon the wall.

Nye's voice drifted from the stockroom. "What was that? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I just..." Looking down at his hands, he saw that they were trembling. He forced a lie past the lump in his throat. "I—I tripped." Unseen eyes pricked like needles at his skin as he slammed the locker shut. He was used to dealing with ghosts. They were spontaneous creatures, left behind in the wake of tragedy to fill the hole where their hearts used to be. He'd encountered his fair share of goblins and gremlins and lord knows what else, too, but this... none of them made his skin crawl the way _this_ did.

When he returned, the soft pit-pat of his footsteps went unnoticed. Nye was just easing himself onto his feet, clicking his knee into place with a grimace—he thought he was alone. He was vulnerable, the smile he wore around his employees his only protection; without it he was just a middle-aged middle manager, chained to his desk by paperwork and obligations. Without it his life was laid bare, his regrets carved into the lines of his face, the shadows under his eyes, his mistakes the scars sliced into his arms down to the bone.

Without his smile there were cracks in his wall. He was defenceless.

His feet scuffed on the tiles and Nye glanced up in surprise, brightening at the sight of him hovering outside, looking embarrassed in his new uniform. Once more he donned the smile with which he hid his wounds from the world. "Now you look the part! C'est magnifique!"

Ash squirmed. Maybe he was right, maybe it wasn't so bad. "Um, m—merci beaucoup! C'est gentil de votre part," he responded without thought, stopping when he saw the blank look in the man's gaze; he hadn't understood a word. "I... thank you."

"You're welcome." He tilted his head, a glint of mirth in his dark honey eyes. "I was right, the hat does suit you."

As far as managers went, he seemed... nice enough. In another time and place Ash might have liked him, but here, now, he was an obstacle between him and his goal—and worse, he was keeping secrets from him. He wished he could trust him... but people didn't put up walls around themselves like that if they had nothing to hide.

Nye shut and locked the stockroom behind him, whistling something that sounded a lot like Enter Sandman. "Right, I'll show you to your office. This way."

When the lights went out, rooms and hallways became the passages of a cave, phosphorescent stars winking down at them from the ceiling like glow worms. The floor was still wet from cleaning and sloshed underfoot. With the heady scent of the open ocean that rushed through the halls with every gust, they might have been exploring the depths of a seaside cave. Any moment and the tide could come rushing in to wash them both away. Ash shivered; it took all of his willpower to block out that image, to ignore the walls which pressed in closer and closer around him, the flickers of movement in the darkness at his heels. He tried to tell himself that it was just a trick of perception, that, without light, all the rooms seemed smaller than they really were and played mind games with his phobias.

 _Thud-thunk._

Glancing at his new manager, he saw that he, too, looked ill at ease now that the ticking machine within the walls had fallen silent and all was still and dark. His features were taut as he straightened his waistcoat, his tailored shirt in a shade of violet more appealing than the company standard; neither looked cheap. The clockwork rhythm of his footsteps drew his gaze. His curiosity had always been insatiable—having caught a glimpse of the man behind the mask, he wanted more. How did he cripple his leg? What gave him those scars?

But he caught him staring and Ash shrank away from the steel in his gaze. "We all have our war wounds," he said, his voice level, the grim resignation of someone who had deflected the same glances, the same questions, a thousand times before.

Flushing, he glanced away and at the staff noticeboard mounted on the wall, at the drawings pinned there. They were all scribbled on the activity sheets handed out by Foxy in the arcade, depicting, with varying degrees of skill, happy children beside their idols: laughing with Bonnie, dancing with Chica, digging for treasure with Foxy while Freddy looked on in disapproval. He remembered doing the same with dad, sharing a sheet together as they each came up with more and more outlandish scenes until they were laughing too much to be able to see straight, let alone draw. His mouth twisted into a grimace at the words emblazoned on the board above them; 'remember to smile!'. "Sometimes they're inside, where you can't see them."

Nye came to a stop at the door of the security office, a slab of metal several inches thick and painted to blend into the walls. The colour was scratched off in places. "I'm sorry about your father," he murmured as he searched through his keys, "he was a good man."

"How did you know him? Um, if you don't mind me asking."

"We worked together, though that was a long time ago. I'm... not surprised you don't remember me." The lines at the corners of his lips deepened, tainting his smile with a hint of bitter tonic. It must hurt, to be so easily forgotten.

"So you don't know—"

"No. I don't." His eyes were sharp as he looked back at him. "No one does. And if you know what's good for you, you won't ask. The locals... they don't like those sorts of questions." With a ram of his shoulder and a click like a gunshot, the door swung open.

That was the end of the conversation.

Ash eyed the room, dread plummeting like a stone to the pit of his stomach. With the bars on the window it looked more like a prison. It was the smallest he had seen thus far and packed with filing cabinets; he would be able to reach every single one of them without having to move from his chair. The only space without one was occupied by a heavy steel desk, two monitors balanced on top of it in a tangle of cables, gadgets and wires. None of it looked new. There were dozens of dirty mugs left stacked on the desk and on every other free surface. He wrinkled his nose; gross. Just the thought of working in here night after night made his skin crawl. His imagination conjured images of him being locked in without power, without anyone knowing where to find him, and iron clamps tightened around his lungs.

Just stay calm, just breathe in and breathe out. As long as he left the door open and all the lights on, he could cope.

Nye had busied himself fussing with a cabinet mounted on the wall, muttering under his breath. "Darn it, Pascal still hasn't changed the lock on this thing—ah, here we go. Here," he extracted a slender baton, pulling a face at the webs which clung to it, and passed it to him.

It felt cold in his hands. All things were shaped by their purpose, and those made solely for violence sought only to spread it—it was all they knew, all that gave them life. This one hadn't been used to hit anyone, thank goodness, but it was still a weapon and he paled at the thought of wielding it himself.

"And here's your standard issue flashlight. Jones never used the thing so there's still plenty of life left in it, but you're responsible for your own batteries after." Nye pressed a set of keys into his fingers. "Front door," he said, pointing at a bronze one larger than the others, "back door, and this one is the key to this office. The door's a bit stiff as you saw, just kick and shove it until it opens. Think you can remember all that?"

"I think so."

"Good. Now here," he leaned over to give one of the monitors an affectionate pat, ignoring the way it wobbled dangerously close to the edge of the desk, "is our... heh, state of the art monitoring system, which was not at all cobbled together from pieces bought second hand from liquidation sales! It, uh, gets the job done. Password's under the keyboard."

He was going to stand right behind him and watch him work, wasn't he? Ash suppressed the urge to push him away and slid behind the desk and into the chair. It squealed in protest.

The system was running Windows, a version ten years out of date but serviceable. He trawled through the feeds, noting with distaste that it was set up to display one at a time so that each had to be clicked through manually. Inefficient. That was the first thing he fixed, tiling all of the feeds on one of the monitors so that he could spot glimpses of movement on all of them at once. Clicking on one would bring it up full size on the second monitor; much better. He was already halfway through patching the cameras to control their pan and zoom remotely when Nye cleared his throat.

"Um, I see you're already making yourself at home."

"I fixed it."

"...I'll take your word for it. Uh, I'm supposed to go over the fire and hurricane procedures, but... honestly, all that stuff is on the board, we're short on time so I'm just going to get to the point. Just read it yourself when you can, I'll know if you don't."

Ash's fingers tightened around the baton. "So what do I do if someone breaks in?"

"We generally advise against engaging with the intruder," he said, adjusting his cuffs—a nervous tic, Ash noticed. He'd done that three times in the last half hour alone, "in most cases it's best to stay in here and call the police. Just... use your common sense and handle the situation as best you can. If at any point you feel like you're... in danger, this room is the most secure in the building so just hit the alarm and barricade the door."

"What happens if the building loses power?" He asked, eyeing the hydraulic bars on this side of the door. Each one was as thick as his wrist. Suddenly, the thought of finding himself trapped in here, alone and in the dark, didn't seem so far-fetched.

"The bars are magnetically locked and need power to stay closed, so you can't get stuck in here if that's what you're thinking."

Well, at least he didn't have to worry about that. "Okay. So... stay put, watch the cameras, call the relevant authorities should anything happen." He bit his lip. "Sounds straightforward."

Nye's smile didn't reach his eyes. "You got it. Keep an eye on the animatronics in particular, they... w—we've had break-ins targeting them before. Cameras 1C and 8A. Let me know if anything changes, and I mean _anything._ Dialling extension four will put you through to my office. I'll check back later to see how you're doing, all right? But I think you'll do just fine." He gave him a long, calculating look, then limped from the room and down the corridor.

Ash allowed himself to relax a little—the office felt bigger with only one person occupying it. He plugged his tablet into the computer tower whirring under the desk and, keeping one eye on the camera feeds, probed the system for exploitable weaknesses. The obsolete software put up no resistance.

Well, that was easy.

He toed a dark patch on the carpet that smelled of Jack Daniels, frowning. Something here felt terribly wrong in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on, as if the very walls watched him. The animatronics did, too, gaping up at him through the cameras like they knew he was there. Restless, now, he left the system to copy itself onto his tablet and wriggled from his chair. It took no more than four steps to pace the length of the room. It stank of sweat and fear, he noted, running the tips of his fingers over the wall. A film of dread came away like ashes on his skin. There was a second window, slightly larger, overlooking the hallway; it, too, was fitted with steel bars. And there, right in the grooves where toughened glass met the wainscoting on the other side, was a tinge of red. Against his better judgement, he reached out to touch the glass, to call out the memories, the pain, marked there.

The phone rang and startled him from his reverie. Who would call at this time at night? After a long, painful moment spent considering whether he could get away with letting it go to the answering machine, he snatched it off the hook and put on his best attempt at what he imagined to be an official tone. "Uh, F—Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, Ash Fletcher speaking."

There was someone on the other end of the line, he could just make out the sound of breathing—they hung up without a word.

Didn't Jeremy say that everyone was talking about him, the latest, and least qualified, in a long chain of night guards? None of them ever stayed longer than a few months. It was probably one of the day staff pranking him, trying to creep him out. W—well, that wasn't going to work!

He returned to the cameras with renewed vigour, determined to put this prankster in their place. Pulling up 1C on the second monitor, he returned the stares with a frown. Even through the grain on the feed he could see the bright lenses of their eyes burning right into his own. They were switched off last time he was in the main hall. He watched them shiver and twitch, feeling more uneasy by the minute. Maybe he should call Nye? Then again, he was the closest thing to an animatronic technician on site and this might be something he could fix. It wouldn't hurt to take a look. Taking the phone and poking his head out into the corridor, he checked that the light was on in the manager's office and the door shut before padding softly down the corridor and past the golden arrow.

" _Ashley."_

Three robotic heads swivelled to watch him when he flicked on the lights, mouths snapping shut with a click that echoed from the walls. Their eyelids were forced open as far as they would go, plastic eyes bulging from their sockets, and he could hear the whine of overtaxed servos from across the room. The bolts in their feet rattled as they tugged on them.

There was no way this behaviour was normal.

Okay... extension four. The phone rang for no more than a second before a click told him Nye had picked up.

"Yes? What do you need?"

"Is it normal for the animatronics to turn themselves back on?"

There was an uncomfortably long pause, like Nye had to think about his answer. "Yes and no... why?

"Well, I'm looking at them right now, and they're definitely awake."

"What... what are they doing?"

"Lifting their feet, pulling at the bolts and…" he met the eyes of Chica, who was standing closest, "uh, staring. A lot."

"But they are still restrained?"

"Yes—"

The cupcake and plate clattered from Chica's grip when she lunged for him. He leapt back with a cry, but with her restraints her charge was cut short and left her hunched in place, limbs jerking like an insect on the verge of death. He shrank away from the insanity in those eyes, but they tracked him no matter where he moved.

"Wait, what was that? Are you in the main hall?"

Ash let out a shuddering breath, ignoring the way his heart banged painfully against his ribs. "Y—yeah, I was trying to see if I could find out what the problem—"

" _No!_ Leave them alone and get yourself back in that office, this instant!"

"But—"

"Just watch them on the cameras and call me if they do anything else." Nye's tone softened as he trailed off into a sigh, and Ash could picture him running a hand over his thin, tired face. "I'll... get Louise to look at them in the morning, all right?"

Something stirred in the dark, something which made the hairs prickle on the back of Ash's neck. He felt that whisper beneath his skin, felt it calling to him as it crept like poison through his veins. It snapped its jaws, icicle teeth brushing past his ear, every word laced hatred and malice.

" _He is a liar."_

He flinched, pulling himself free of the claws which grabbed at his shoulders, his clothes. And there, cast from all directions at once onto the wall behind him, was a shadow—fragmented, all impossible angles and shapes that made no sense, claws here, fangs there, and two pinprick eyes like firefly candles, burning into his own.

" _He will hurt you."_

With a blink it was gone, and the room twisted back into the shape it was supposed to be.

"I…." From the falter in Nye's voice, he wondered if he too heard it speak, heard that hiss dripping with venom—or maybe just his frightened gasp. "I—well, I should let you get back to it. I'll check in on you later, okay?"

 _Click._

His fingers hovered over the light switch as he went to leave, but something in his gut told him to leave them on. Looking back up the stage, he saw that the animatronics were once again locked into their usual poses, still, lifeless, their glassy eyes gazing out through the window and at the whispering ocean beyond.


	4. Chapter Three: Folie à Deux

**CHAPTER THREE**

FOLIE À DEUX

* * *

In the early hours of the morning, even the slightest squeak of floorboards underfoot felt deafening. Ash froze on the stairs that hugged the side of the stage, biting his lip. He was never explicitly told that backstage was off limits. Nye, however, made it more than clear that no one was to touch the animatronics but their handlers, no exceptions. Good thing he had already clocked out for the day and gone home, leaving one less person to catch him in the act.

The day staff began to trickle in with the first rays of morning sun, eyes still gummed half-shut with sleep, yawning as they bumbled one by one to the breakroom. He made sure they stayed there with a tactical drop of cookies on one of the tables; no one could resist grandma's double chocolate chip recipe. Of course, he had baked them for himself as a reward for getting the job... but he was willing to make sacrifices.

When he went five heartbeats without hearing the approach of curious footsteps, he eased his foot onto the very last stair and parted the great black curtain with the tips of his fingers. There was no one in its shadow but the animatronics themselves, misshapen silhouettes distinguishable from the props only by the gleam of their eyes and teeth, picked out in dusty shafts of rose gold dawn.

Nye had been evasive on the topic, but he got the feeling that this erratic behaviour was a recurring issue. If the technician couldn't fix it, maybe he could. Satisfied that he was alone, he slipped through and found the controls to winch the curtain all the way closed.

There had to be a master override to keep them powered off. If he was going to try and figure out what was wrong, the last thing he wanted was for them to switch on and start flailing while he was within easy reach. With a swipe of his phone he illuminated the thick cables, each the size of a garden hose, plugged into hatches in their backs. Following them to their source revealed a switchboard mounted on the wall with an assortment of controls for the lights, audio and the animatronics. One was labelled 'maintenance mode', which, if past experience was anything to go by, was exactly what he wanted. Flicking it on changed the LEDs across the board from green to red.

After a moment's hesitation, he decided to turn on the dim safety lights too; it was dangerous to handle electronics in the dark and anyone passing by should assume that it was just the technician or one of the handlers working here. He hadn't seen the pink-haired lady come in yet and hoped he had the stage to himself. If there was anyone he didn't want to encounter while poking around in the animatronics, it was her—she would probably beat him to death with a wrench.

Seeing them up close confirmed that these were different robots to the ones he knew and loved. He remembered a Bonnie with a short muzzle and round, trusting eyes, his fur soft and midnight blue. He remembered Freddy's broad smile, his red, puffy cheeks, his impromptu 'magic' shows that never went quite according to plan. These were built not for whimsy but to stand up to constant wear and tear, machine-stitched felt bolted onto a sturdy plastic shell. It all made perfect sense, the costume could be removed and steam cleaned without a fuss. Cheap, practical, durable. Of course they would replace old animatronics as they wore out and technology advanced... but logic couldn't stop the grief that stuck like glass in his throat, like he came home to find out that his best friends were dead.

Home? His lips curled into a bitter smile. This place stopped being a home for him a long time ago—sentimental thoughts would get him nowhere.

His eyes landed on the shape of Chica, standing slack-jawed in the darkest corner, one arm still raised as if in greeting. A small part of him did wonder if there was a shadow of her predecessor in there, somewhere. She was his favourite; he used to follow her around, hoping for another cupcake. On occasion she would indulge him, handing him the biggest one on the platter with a hint of a cheeky smile, one only he could see.

"Let's fix you first," he murmured, though he knew she couldn't hear him. "For old times' sake." He dug in his pocket for his mini screwdriver and multitool, glad that he'd thought to bring them to work—just in case—and set about looking for some sort of latch that would open Chica's front panel. While he worked he kept his ears trained on the stairs, alert for any creaking which would give away unsolicited visitors. The panel opened with a click and he cast an eye over the jumble of parts inside. It wasn't tidy, but it all seemed to be in working order.

His... _gift_ wasn't limited to people. All things, living and inanimate alike, held within them a tiny spark. He could hear how every little piece fitted together, turned, and set another ticking. He could feel the pulse of electricity like lifeblood through mechanical veins.

Breathe in... breathe out. He reached out with that part of himself that was more than what could be seen and listened for a discordant voice amongst the gears and motors, the cry of a piece that was broken and in need of attention.

But when he found the place where her spark should be, there was nothing there but darkness.

The safety lights snapped off. A hand lashed out from the dark and grabbed hold of his wrist, and with a painful twist his tools went clattering to the floor. He stifled a panicked cry and tried to worm free, but those fingers were thicker than his arm and held on like a vice. "N—no, let go!" But he was powerless to resist as Chica dragged him closer.

Her head lolled at an unnatural angle, her jaw hanging loose against her open chest, inches from his face. Even in the dark he could see that she had two sets of teeth. Mechanical parts screamed as one, united in their agony, as she stooped to his level and stared right into his eyes... but there were only black pits where her own ought to be.

" _Ashley."_

Shadows like ink crept down her face from her empty sockets, from her beak, oozing from her joints. It reached out for him, running phantom claws like razors gently down his cheek. He recoiled at its touch, scrunching his eyes shut to block out the sight of this nightmare taking hold of him.

Footsteps warned him that someone was coming. A door slammed open, lights buzzed to life.

"Hey! Get away from that animatronic!"

" _We've been waiting for so long."_

Two voices, speaking as one; its whispers cut through him like a knife down to the bone. He felt it coiling around his heart, scratching at the cage inside where he kept his own spark locked away from the world.

Calling to it, calling to _him._

He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe. He couldn't hear the scream that tore from his lips.

* * *

"Daddy!"

He tugged with pudgy fingers at his father's jeans, paying no mind to the streaks of oil that rubbed off onto his hands. "Look! Look at me!"

Gael paused, glancing over one shoulder at a giggling Ashley, his lean features softening into a smile at the sight of him bouncing on his heels and pleased as punch with his brand new sweatshirt. It was soft and snug and cotton cloud grey, with pointed wolf ears sewn onto the hood and even a little tail tacked on at the back. He set aside the vegetable peeler and turned to lean against the countertop. "Wow! Where did you get that?"

Ashley beamed, chest swelling with pride. "Me and Sera went shopping!" Sera Schmidt was his best friend; they always played together in the treehouse her daddy built for her, hosting high tea with her Bonnie doll as the guest of honour. Sometimes, when no one was looking, they would sneak bread rolls from the kitchen for the occasion.

He saw out of the corner of his eye the poster of the three golden mascots taped to the fridge, a bear, a rabbit and a wolf; daddy and his friends. No one knew it, but behind the masks all three of them were pulling faces while they posed for the photo. They told him so when they gave him the first of the posters to be printed—but only if he promised to keep it a secret.

Grinning, he pulled up his hood. "I look like you daddy!"

"So you do," Gael chuckled, kneeling to straighten the ears so they sat in just the right place on top of his head. "Maybe if you practice, they'll let you come up on stage one day. The Fazbear show, starring Rupert Garou and Puppy too!"

"Really?"

"Really. Is this what you were saving all that pocket money for?"

"Yeah! But..." He scuffed his sneakers against the linoleum, pink dusting his cheeks, "I didn't have enough. B—but Mike bought it!"

"Well that was nice of him. See? He's not so scary."

"He tells me off lots..."

Gael tilted his head, his smile turning to mischief. That playful sparkle, like twinkling stars, danced in his eyes. "That's because you keep doing things you're not supposed to. Like the time you put a spider in Eric's bag."

"But—" Ashley hesitated, shrinking under the intensity of his gaze, then admitted, "it was funny."

"No it—well, okay, yes it was. But it still wasn't very nice."

"C—can you tell me a story if I promise I won't do it again?"

He raised an eyebrow at the sly expression on his son's face, perhaps wondering if he wasn't the best of influences. "Daddy's busy making dinner."

"Pleeeease?"

At that he burst into laughter and scooped him up, settling him on one shoulder with a crooked grin that widened at his giggles. "Okay, okay, you win. Which story do you want?"

"The one with the scary man! And the ghost ship!"

"That's a poem."

Huffing, Ashley puffed out his cheeks. "But it's still a story!"

"Of course," he said with a wink, "all the best poems are. Do you want to sit on the beanbag today?"

"Yeah!"

He ducked into the living room and settled down on the beanbag, Ashley's favourite, midnight blue and decorated with stars and moons. Perching him upon his knee, he paused to glance at the heavy raindrops pattering against the window as he considered how best to begin. "It is an ancient Mariner," he murmured, letting his voice become one with the sound of the rain. His words were magic, older than he, and as he wove them together they shaped him into something more, some ancient figure of sea and storm—a glimpse of the truth hidden behind an easy smile. "And he stoppeth one of three,

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,

'There was a ship,' quoth he."

But there was something wrong.

Outside, the wind howled and the rain pounded harder still, rattling the glass in its frame. Water picked at every loose nail, at every crack and gap, until it crept like searching fingers down the walls and left only rotten, crumbling ruin in its wake. Ashley stared with wide, pale eyes at the great black storm rolling in beyond, an unnatural, frightful darkness. The lights flicked off and twisted shadows pressed against broken window panes, against gaping holes where walls once stood, watching with bright, hungry eyes. He whimpered and huddled closer to his father's chest, but he found no comfort there; it was cold.

"Daddy?" Reaching up, he touched his face and something wet and sticky came away on his fingers—blood.

"I missed you, Ashley."

That was not his father's voice. He yelped as long fingers, inhumanly strong, wrapped tight around his wrist. A child no longer, he struggled to stand, to escape that grip of frozen steel, but could only cry out as he was forced onto his knees.

Dishevelled hair fell loose from Gael's ponytail and into his eyes, obscuring them from view. With his other hand he cupped Ash's face, his nails digging painfully into the skin. "He took you away from me. But you're here now, you came back. Everything's going to be all right... I promise."

"Dad, stop it! Let me go!"

Nails bit deeper still, and the warmth trickling down his cheek told him that they had drawn blood. "Welcome home… little star."

* * *

"Chica, I said _no._ You sit your ass down and think about what you've done."

Ash blinked as the ceiling swam into focus, crossed with trusses, spotlights and wires. It dawned on him that he was sprawled on the stage; from the sting in his elbows this was a recent development. He peered about him with bleary eyes at the props and cardboard cutouts that lined the walls: trees, farmhouses, even a person...

Wait.

"Sweet baby Jesus, I thought I was goin'a have to call an ambulance!"

He shrieked and scrambled to escape with what was left of his pride, but the sudden movement made the world sway around him; bile rose in his throat.

She eyed him from her spot on the floor, thick, powerful hands braced against her knees. "...Or an exorcist. Maybe both."

It was the technician from last night, looking pleased that he was conscious and talking—or making noises at least. His gut twisted itself into guilty knots when he saw her puffy eyes, her pale, drawn cheeks, streaked grey with mascara. She wasn't backstage fixing something or looking for parts... she was there because it was the only place where she could be left alone.

Well, where she _thought_ she could be alone.

"The hell d'you think you were doing?" She growled, rising onto boot-clad feet twice the size of his. He shrank back, wishing for nothing more than the ability to melt into the cracks between the floorboards as she towered over him. "You lost your mind? Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense wouldn't come within arm's reach of these damn things after seein' them at night."

"I..." his voice was small, a mouse's whisper. "I wanted to see if I could fix them."

Calloused hands hauled him to his feet. "You new kids, thinkin' you can come up here an' tell me how to do my damn job." She knocked the dust from his clothes with blows that had him buckling at the knees, but her features were twisted in worry, her words bravado. Through her touch he felt a conscience burdened not with anger but with fear, with regret. Not again, it said. Guilty thoughts chased each other round and round inside her head, taking turns to heap their blame on her. It was her fault he got hurt. She should've been watching the stage, she should've been doing her job. Her lips trembled.

"I'm not a kid." Without any further comment, he produced a pack of clean tissues from his pocket and offered her one.

"I don't fucking care." She took it, scowling, and uncomfortable silence stretched between them while she scrubbed furiously at her eyes. Though she said nothing, Ash knew she was glad he never asked what was wrong. With the evidence erased at last she let out a shuddering breath. "Did she hurt you?"

"I—I don't think so."'

Her eyes lingered on his cheek where it stung. In response he raised a hand and blood came away on his fingertips. That was exactly where he felt those nails raking down his face in that... nightmare. A shiver crawled like maggots down his spine. "Guess I, uh, scratched myself on a nail or something when I..." he lied, curling his fingers into fists to bury the mark of crimson. His knuckles pressed harsh and white against the skin, "...when I fell."

He refused to say that he fainted. That word implied weakness, that his problems made him somehow less than other people. 'Little baby Ashley fainted again', that was what that Donovan boy had said the day it happened.

The woman's features softened. "Good, that's... good." She shredded the tissue between her fingers, her eyes distant, furrows carved deep between her brows. "I tried to fix them, y'know. I tried _everything_. Even convinced the boss to cough up the money for a whole new set, suits an' all. Nothing worked."

After what he saw in Chica's heart, Ash knew she was right. This was something that went beyond wires and gears. He was a fool to think he could fix it with only a screwdriver.

He bent to retrieve it from where it fell, ignoring the way the blood rushed to his head, the way his stomach bucked and heaved. His eyes found Chica's, glad to see those dull plastic irises gazing back at him, half-lidded and lazy. It must have been a trick of the mind, those empty sockets. Just old nightmares digging up images he'd rather forget.

"I'm Louise, by the way," she said as she found his multitool and handed it to him. "Louise Bordelon. I'm... I'm sorry ol' Foghorn Leghorn won't let you work up here. Damn shame, you're wasted in security. So, uh, you wanna grab some breakfast? The boss don't care when I come an' go so long as it's not during shows, and... to be honest you look like shit and need some food."

Ash had pictured an oversized owl, not a rooster, but knew exactly who she was referring to. The image made him smile. "Sounds like a good plan."

"Meet you outside in five, I need to finish up here first." At that she turned back to the animatronics, hefting the crowbar she must have used to pry Chica off of him. Even she wasn't brave enough to take chances around these broken machines.

That was as good a farewell as he was going to get. He turned to leave, but something caught his foot and almost sent him sprawling. Glancing down, the blood in his veins ran cold when he saw a twisted set of restraining bolts, exactly like the ones used on the animatronics, jutting from the boards like crooked fingers.

He bit back the nausea that wriggled inside and fled the stage.


	5. Chapter Four: The Weight of Silence

**CHAPTER FOUR**

THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE

* * *

The wind rushed to meet Ash as the door swung shut behind him. Like a doting aunt it fussed over his hair and clothes, tugging here, pushing there. The cut on his cheekbone stung when it probed at it with worrying fingers. "I'm fine," he said, shrugging it off.

A girl with glossy walnut hair pinned up into a French braid gave him a curious glance as she shouldered her bag and tugged open the door. She didn't shiver as she passed into its shadow. Then, she couldn't see or feel the things he could, the things which lurked inside—the blind had no reason to fear the darkness.

He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with the smell of the sea. Mere hours had passed since he first walked in through those doors and he'd already forgotten the world beyond, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the taste of surf on the air. Just one month. If in a month he had no leads, there were other jobs in town, jobs where he could work outside and spend time near the shore. He'd like that.

A stray breeze tugged on his pockets and he glanced down, frowning. "I already said I'm—" Oh, the leaf. Most of the others had blown away overnight; it probably wanted something to play with. Digging it out, slightly crumpled, and releasing it into the wind, he watched as it spiralled up, up, over the loading cranes, over the smoke stacks and chimneys and out of sight.

"Why are there leaves in your pockets?"

It was Louise, hefting an enormous chest of a toolbox in one hand as she kicked the door shut behind her. Out here in the sun, the tattoos coiling down her arms caught the light in a dazzling rainbow of hues. Tigers wreathed in flames, jewel-bright hummingbirds with glittering wings, flowers in every colour—each had a story to tell.

Figuring that explaining himself would only make it stranger, he shrugged in response.

She snorted. "You're lucky I like weird."

While she locked the toolbox in the back seat of her ute, Ash held back and listened to the song of the maple tree. "What's with those?" He asked, nodding to the collection of bottles swinging from its branches: big ones, small ones, blue and green and brown, even some that were stamped with a past rendition of the Fazbear logo.

"You never heard of a bottle tree before?" Louise looked back over her shoulder, arching an eyebrow. "It's to trap evil spirits and keep 'em from causin' any trouble. The older kids throw rocks at them and get broken glass everywhere though, we keep telling people to stop doing it but, y'know..."

"They think it's cursed," Ash murmured, watching them glitter in the sun. They were empty, of course; it would take more than glass and bitter hopes to lift the shadow hanging over this place. He shivered.

She chewed her lip, hands on hips, as she considered the uniform hanging from him like a gaudy circus tent. "It… might be a good idea to keep your jacket zipped up and your hat in your bag. Just in case."

The Freddy sign waved farewell as they trudged around the corner, past a man in a black jacket leaning on the wall and playing with his phone—one of the day staff? Ash felt his eyes tracking him out onto the road that swept around the side of the pizzeria, down the hill to the docks. He knew who he was already… everyone here did. And everyone talked about him, he knew that too. Once the word spread it wouldn't matter whether he wore his uniform in public or not.

But it was certainly beautiful... a place lost between the years, existing outside of time, outside of the reality shared by the rest of the world. Houses peeked here and there from the greenery, parting the curtains of willows to watch them as they passed. There were still strings of fairy lights lashed to the roofs and balustrades, a vivid detail which leapt from his childhood memories right before his eyes, but the reason for it escaped him. The sun had long since crested the ocean ahead of them, gilding the tops of the waves rolling in from the bay, boats bobbing like toys in a vat of molten gold.

There was one thing, however, that its light refused to touch and that was the sheer black cliffs of Siren Rock. He felt it beckoning to him, drawing his gaze to that dark, jagged peak, silhouetted against a powder blue sky. Everyone knew that the geography of the area was abnormal. There were no mountains in these parts, no cliffs, no rocky headlands. None save this single spire of rock jutting from the seabed like a talon, inexplicable, unfathomable, just... _there,_ like it had always been. Holy Point, that's what it was called on all the maps. No one here used that name for anything but scorn.

"Look sharp, bebette," said Louise, tugging him firmly back to earth, "or you'll start catching flies."

He blinked and saw that they had reached the foot of the hill. The sea that had looked so calm from the hillside was at high tide, whipped into wild, roaring swells by the force of the wind. Even here, set back from the shore on the first, lower seawall, he felt the ocean spray lashing across his face.

For what felt like the first time since he came here, a smile curved across his lips.

* * *

Rambley's was located in the Old Quarter, out on the creaking maze of ropes and walkways that served as the port's docks in its founding days, now little more than a spot for tourists to moor their jetboats and yachts. An old boathouse repurposed into serving breakfast all day, every day, the place smelled of fish, sweat and pancakes drizzled with hot syrup. Ash wrinkled his nose, unsure of what to make of this combination.

He was crammed alongside Louise in a long line of disgruntled shift workers, their eyes puffy, their jumpsuits and fluorescent vests askew and streaked with grime—presumably the source of the sweaty odour. Disapproving stares burned into him from all directions. They wondered what he was doing here so early in the morning. He wasn't one of them, he didn't belong here. Biting his lip, he kept his elbows tucked close, arms folded tight around himself, and tried to look as uninteresting as possible. These people were a lot bigger than him.

But Louise was bigger still. Seeing his discomfort, she returned the stares with a jut of her chin and crossed arms that no one wanted to argue with; he wasn't sure he wanted to, either. Most broke under her gaze and went back to minding their own business, but the resentment lingered like a dark current beneath the surface. "Not so tough now, huh?" She scoffed, a grin working its way onto her face at the set of their jaws, the clench of their teeth. _"Boys."_

Someone in the line behind them snorted.

"It's not normally this busy," she added in a softer tone, looking down at him with sympathy in her eyes, "they must've just changed shifts at the refinery."

"I'm okay," he lied.

"Want to sit outside?"

"Y—yeah."

When at last it came their turn to order, the man at the counter only gaped at him when he asked if any of the recipes were vegan, or if he could have soy in his latte instead of milk. So he just picked the blueberry pancakes and took what he was given without a word, flushing pink at the grumblings from the workers behind him. They chose a table around the back, on a creaking platform where several fishing boats were moored and bobbing on the swell; from the blood leaking from an ice box on the nearest vessel, it had been a successful morning. His mind painted pictures of fish lying glassy-eyed and lifeless inside and his stomach lurched.

"So, where are you from?" Louise asked, mouth full, as she tore into her BLT.

Well, she… seemed like a nice person. Rough, genuine, honest—perhaps excessively so. She didn't lie to him the way Nye did. "I... was actually born here," he admitted, poking at his pancakes. "We moved to New York when I was still a kid."

He was the one lying now… the way he told it made it sound like it was something mom planned. Like they didn't flee under the cover of nightfall, his little hands pressed to the rear window as he watched the fairy lights disappear into the darkness far behind them. He couldn't remember why they were running, only the tears streaming down her face as she pressed her foot to the gas.

Guilt twisted in his heart like a knife. Maybe he should call her.

"The city?"

"Yeah."

"Shit, that's a big change. D'you like it there?"

"It's big, dusty… loud. Too many people. But there's always something to do, something new every day. I like that I guess. Uh, what about you?"

"Not much to tell, to be honest," said Louise, brushing the leftover crumbs from her fingers. Her eyes, sharp and hazel in the sunlight, flicked up at the thump of boots on the dock and watched as whoever it was took the table behind them. "Lived up in the big easy before I came down here. Got tired of fixing old parade floats, y'know? The quiet's nice, when it's the goodkind of quiet."

"What's the 'bad' kind?"

She jerked her head at a pair of fishermen standing guard over their boat, the life-jackets belted around their chests still damp with seaspray, fat, greasy bagels clutched in crooked fingers. Their eyes glinted from under craggy brows.

He knew what she meant. It was the presence of silence, not the absence of sound—the silence of unspoken words. It weighed on him like a stone on his chest he couldn't lift. He wasn't like them, it whispered as it pressed in closer. They knew he didn't belong here.

"Huh." She raised her eyebrows at something over his head. "Well you're just a real life Snow White, 'aintcha? So what brought you back here—finding your roots?"

Avoiding her eyes, he glanced up at the sparrows lined up along the guttering, eyeing his breakfast with blatant jealousy. He thought of the old photo of his dad tucked away in his wallet, creased and faded but those eyes… untouched by time, just like he remembered them. They were messing around in the arcade photo booth and Ash set it off with his foot when he started tickling him—it was the only picture he had. "Yeah... I guess you could say that. I lost something important to me. I was hoping I would find it if I came back." His smile twisted bitterly. "Maybe I'll find myself, too."

Her eyes were understanding as she folded her hands together on the table in front of her, staring down at the rose tattoos which coiled around them, knuckles pressed white against walnut skin. For the first time Ash noticed the faint impression on her ring finger. "A lot of people lose something at Freddy's."

That was a topic neither of them wanted to touch on. So the quiet stretched on, pierced only by the flutter of their umbrella in the wind and the muttering of other patrons at other tables.

"Aye, him's the one I told you about. No one else got eyes like the Devil's own. And look at them birds."

It was an old woman, her accent marking her as a born native of Holyhead. People here spoke with salt on their lips and oaths on their tongues, cursing nameless spirits with every breath. Her eyes were thin, wicked, and they crinkled when she saw him looking. She knew he could hear her every word. "It's a bad omen, I can feel it in my bones."

Ash's fingers dug into the wood of the table, softened by years of sun and salt and rain, leaving pale, jagged lines. Their stares branded his skin as he tore away his gaze and cast it across the water, skyward to the lighthouse perched atop Siren Rock, stark and glittering white against the stone. It was built to keep boats from wrecking on the spire's cruel teeth—what sheltered the bay from storms demanded a blood tithe of its own. But even this grim monument to the dead could not hold his gaze. It slid down the razor-edged peaks, down the dark cliff faces, to the collection of buildings huddled in its shadow. Something about them made old, forgotten gears begin to turn in his mind, made goosebumps like electric shivers run across his skin. He knew those mismatched buildings, somehow. But the links were gone, cut cleanly as if to keep him from remembering, and he was left with only an image with no date or name.

The words tumbled from his lips before he could stop them. "What's that?"

It was a mistake. He knew that, but the damage was already done.

They looked at him with hardened eyes and faces, with mouths pulled taut and pale. Clothes rustled as some touched wood, as others marked out the cross on their chests. In a blink it was the faces of his bullies staring back at him with sneers and loathing written across their lips. Silence, the weight of condemnation, so heavy now that it crushed the air from his chest and bowed his shoulders until they trembled under the strain. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't escape—

Something clattered on the table behind him. A man sat alone there with an enormous plate of sausages, eggs and bacon, muttering a string of exotic curses under his breath as he bent to retrieve his fork. With his choppy hair and leather jacket, both black, he looked like he had stepped out of a band poster.

The man from the pizzeria.

His hand fell away from whatever he was reaching for inside his jacket. Their eyes met, his grey-blue and hard like steel.

Louise called out, too loud, too bold, and the disapproving stares snapped to her. "Mike, that you? Ha! The hell are you doin' up this early?"

"None of yer business." He scowled, setting his jaw—he sounded British. "What's it to you?"

"Come on, don't be like that. You only scrub the graffiti off my car every fucking week. That how you treat your customers? You ain't even half awake yet."

"Please don't," said Ash in a small voice, but she ignored him. Why did she have to make a scene now? His fingers curled into pale, trembling fists. People hated him enough already.

But… they weren't looking at him any more. She was throwing him a smokescreen, taking the attention off of him and onto herself. She was used to disapproval for her tattoos, her hair, for doing work that, in the small minds of the people here, rightfully belonged to a man—and she _thrived_ on it. The more they stared at her, the more they muttered and gossiped, the wider her grin.

"You got me confused with someone who gives a shit." Mike kicked back his chair and stood, knocking the rest of his cutlery and the tray of condiments from the table. Some slipped through gaps in the planks and into the water below with a 'plunk'.

"Don't be all dramatic. Sit down and drink your tea."

He grunted. "They don't know 'ow to make a good cuppa 'ere anyway. I'm out." At that, he threw his cash on the table with the bill and, with one last glance at Ash with those eyes like cold blades, he stormed off. Ancient wood creaked and groaned under his weight.

"Cranky old bastard," Louise said, but she was smiling. "Now if he don't want that bacon, I'm having it."

While she retrieved Mike's abandoned plate and brought it back to her seat, Ash stared down at the remnants of his pancakes. He wasn't hungry any more. "I'm full," he muttered, pushing the plate away from him. The things that woman said about him left a sour taste in his mouth.

"Ash… you've hardly touched it—hey!"

But he had already set down a generous tip for all the trouble he caused and, with a whistle to his flock, buried his hands in his pockets and hurried away. The flutter of dozens of wings drowned out the sound of his footsteps.


	6. Chapter Five: Ten of Swords

**CHAPTER FIVE**

TEN OF SWORDS

* * *

The sparrows continued to follow him as he made his way along Rambley Quay. One came to rest on his shoulder and, deciding that it was comfortable there, nestled into his collarbone and went to sleep.

He let his feet carry him where they willed, driven onwards by too many restless thoughts to face returning home, and ignored the stares his company earned him as he turned up his collar against the wind. It ushered him along, tugging at the gaudy pennants that marked the bounds of the market square. The sun glittered on handmade jewellery and pottery, on artisan chocolates and antiques and second hand toys, as the merchants parked along the dockside unpacked their wares and set up for the day. Someone was making hotcakes; the warm scent of oats and honey made him reconsider whether he had room for breakfast after all.

This was one of his favourite haunts as a child. He remembered sprinting between the gazebos and people's legs in search of all the most exciting smells and noises, armed with just enough pocket money for a corn fritter and maybe some fairy floss. Now he was older and wiser, and his wallet much heavier. He couldn't afford the Transformer made of car parts—or fit it in his room—but there were plenty of other, less obvious treasures to be found.

A sad smile touched the corners of his lips. At least one place was still exactly as he remembered it.

Yet that undercurrent remained, black water under thin ice. With every step he felt it creak and crack beneath him. Tension, unease—the people's smiles hid something more. One misstep and the veneer would shatter, plunging him into the cold. And like a ghost rising from the depths, half-forgotten words rang out over the whisper of the sea.

"At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God's name."

That poem, the one his father used to tell him... its words pulled at him like a chain shackled to his heart. Turning, he saw one of the stall owners watching him, a man with golden hair and a cunning glint in his eyes. He wasn't sure he liked it, that knowing sparkle, as though he knew things about him he shouldn't... things he didn't even know himself.

He leaned on his table of wares with bared elbows and bared teeth, a lazy smile stretched across thin, pale lips. Chimes and blades and suspicious rusted implements hung, clinking, from his gazebo above other objects of local superstition. They sang into the wind, shrill siren notes that chilled him to the bone. Strings of crystals scattered broken rainbows wherever the sun struck them. Gris-gris, that's what the people here called those things—artifacts imbued with power that could be used on others for good or for ill. Looking at the bloodstains on them, he was willing to bet that most were the latter.

"It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through."

Those verses felt wrong, somehow, coming from someone else, someone who wasn't Gael Fletcher. This stranger, he couldn't say it right. He couldn't make his words rise and fall like a sea at storm. So Ash drowned them out with thoughts of other things, drifting to the nearest stall to browse the jewellery on offer; maybe he could find a nice present for mom.

"Seeds for your flock?" The lady behind the counter grunted, holding out the bag of sunflower seeds she was snacking from. Her hair was dishevelled and her dark eyes smeared with sleep.

"I probably shouldn't encourage them," He admitted, but with one look from all those beady black eyes he caved and took a handful with a mumbled 'thanks'. At once they erupted from the ground and onto his arm, squabbling and pecking at each other over who had first choice.

"Heh." She watched them fight, her expression a shade warmer. "Funny critters, aren't they? Wish I could get them to do that."

He smiled and picked out a necklace that looked nice, like something his mother would wear. Just a simple silver chain strung with beads of enamel and precious stone in her favourite shade of blue—the colour of Gael's eyes. _His_ eyes.

"Present for someone special?"

"Yeah."

"Why do I get the feeling that this is a guilty gift?"

The sparrow nested in his collar pecked away an interloper that dared to intrude on its slumber. "You have good instincts," he said as he shifted the victim to his other shoulder, where it seemed to be happy with the new arrangements and settled down, fluffed up against the breeze. Its feathers tickled. "She probably thinks I'm dead in a ditch somewhere…"

She quirked a brow and handed him a brown paper bag with the necklace wrapped neatly in tissue paper inside. "Make sure you tell her you're still alive then, yeah? Moms worry enough as it is."

"I will," he said, clutching it close to his chest to protect it from the wind's curious fingers, "I promise."

"Swing by again with your little friends sometime. God knows I could use the diversion..."

He tugged his jacket closer and turned to leave, watching the banners curl around and in on themselves—what was a southerly now blew from the west. Something changed in the air, an electric tension like a storm brewing just over the horizon. But there was no storm, no clouds, only a crisp blue sky raked clear. Roaring gusts dashed waves upon the breakwater as stunned merchants clutched at their hats and wares, lashing his face raw with the sting of cold brine. The sparrows buffeted him with their wings as they fled, twittering, for the relative shelter of the statue of the founder at the heart of the square.

The wind here was playful, the sort that snatched the hat off your head and into the sea, only to return it on the crest of the next wave. It wasn't like it to be so restless, so… angry, pushing and shoving as though it wanted to show him something, something important. When he reached out to soothe it, that something leapt straight into his fingers.

A card, depicting an albatross run through with ten wicked blades, its snowy feathers stained red. He could almost hear its cries as it plunged from a painted sky.

"Straker!" The woman barked. "Keep better handle on your goods, fool!"

He glanced back at the man at the gris-gris stall, who, on meeting his gaze, only smiled.

"'God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

Why look'st thou so?'—With my crossbow

I shot the albatross."

Ash clutched the card in trembling fingers as he approached. The relics arranged so carefully on his table made his skin crawl. These weren't fakes, made to amuse tourists who didn't know any better—the power sealed within them was all too real. He felt it, heard them calling out to him in sweet voices, ghostly fingers brushing past his ear and through his hair as they begged him to unleash them. Gritting his teeth, he picked out each voice and drowned them one by one until all that remained was a buzzing in his ear. Unpleasant, but something he could deal with.

The man, 'Straker' the jeweller had called him, nodded in greeting. "You have my card," he said in a rich voice that reminded him of piano keys.

He hesitated, eyeing the skull perched on a stack of books that seemed to watch him with as much intent as the man who owned it, then held it out. "H—here." Before he had time to blink, Straker seized hold of his hand, turning it so the palm faced upwards. He flinched, biting back the hot anger that bubbled up and threatened to boil over. But no strange, dark thoughts came creeping in to mingle with his own. Like Nye, this man had locked away the secrets of his mind behind impassable walls, and, like Nye, straight scars were carved deep into his arms. He seemed... proud of them, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and blazer to show these horrific wounds to the world.

"Interesting," he murmured, gaze fixed on whatever it was he saw there, "very interesting indeed."

"What is?" Said Ash, a sullen note creeping into his voice. He wished he would let him go.

Those grey eyes flicked up to consider his face. "Here," he said, tracing a finger down the centre of his palm, "I see starlight."

" _Welcome home, little star."_

Ash wrenched his hand free, his heart clenched painfully in a cold fist.

"Ah, forgive me. I do forget my manners when curious little things like you come along," he said, smile crooked as he bowed, "Jacob Straker, at your service." He settled back in his chair, shuffling the deck of cards to which the albatross belonged as if nothing had happened at all. "Your fortune, perhaps?"

Something in his tone told him that it wasn't an offer—it was a demand. He dug in his pocket for his wallet, noting the significant difference in weight after buying that necklace. "How much?"

"For you? It would cost only your time."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I'm far too inquisitive for my own good."

Ash sat in the other chair, admittedly curious himself. He had never had his fortune told before. "So how does this work?"

"These are called tarot cards. Not unlike the cards you'd normally play games with, they're divided into four suits, or houses. The house of chalices," he set one down from the appropriate suit, showing a wolf holding up a single golden cup, "the house of staves, then coins and, last but not least," the fourth and final card showed a sparrow lying dead before a pair of crossed blades, "the house of swords."

"I guess the group they belong to has something to do with their meaning?" Ash said, eyeing the last card with discomfort. The sparrows fidgeted on their perch a safe distance away and watched, chattering to each other in concern, but would not come closer. He missed their warmth on his shoulders but maybe it was for the best—they didn't need to see things like that.

"Correct." Straker shuffled once more, then set nine cards face down on the small table between them. "Choose one and flip it over. Any one, it's the act of choosing that matters."

Biting his lip, Ash stared down at them for an uncomfortable moment before picking the middle one on his right. Turning it over revealed the same card the wind had brought him, albeit upside down, the screaming albatross trailing bloodied feathers as it fell. He snatched his hand away—was this some kind of joke?

Straker rubbed his chin, considering it with an expert eye. "Ten of swords, reversed. Interesting."

"You keep saying that." Ash swallowed the painful lump in his throat, unable to tear his eyes from the card. "What does this mean?"

"The house of swords represents strife and mental anguish. This card, in particular, indicates overwhelming hopelessness, that you're carrying a great weight on your shoulders, one that hurts you more and more with every step you take. Reversed, it means that there's something in your future that you have no choice but to face. Either it will destroy you… or change you forever." Teeth glinted from behind pale lips. "You're a marked man."

Ash stood. "I think I've heard enough."

"As have I. Until next time… Mr. Fletcher."

He never told him his name. He clutched the necklace close to his heart as he stumbled backwards, away from this man who could see right inside him, see all the things he tried so hard to repress, to keep hidden away in that cage inside. But the bars of cages were no match for walls.

"Did he say Fletcher? _That_ Fletcher?"

" _His_ kid?"

He burned under the spotlight. The glances, the whispers, they wormed under his skin. And, unable to claw them out, he ran. Far away from that place, away from him.

Straker watched him go—he could feel his eyes on his back—and packed the cards away in a small wooden box, humming:

"Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung."


	7. Chapter Six: Car Boot Sale

**CHAPTER SIX**

CAR BOOT SALE

* * *

His thumb hovered over the call button, his heart fluttering at the bars of its bony cage. What could he possibly say to explain himself? Would she shout at him? He probably deserved it. Anything as long as she didn't cry again; he didn't think he could take that any more. He hated seeing her hurt like that, hated that after so long she still couldn't let Gael go. Neither of them could.

Ash was sprawled on his bed in a small room at the Anchor Inn, a lodge close to the refineries that offered semi-permanent accommodation to the contract workers who came into the port during peak season. All but the most frugal of tourists gave it a wide berth, so the rates were cheap. No frills, no nonsense, just the way he liked it. His room had a balcony which overlooked the sea and the wisteria growing rampant over every inch of the weatherboards outside masked the stench of the chemicals which drifted downwind.

...There was no use putting it off any longer. Exhaling, he pressed dial and held his cellphone to his ear, sitting up when he heard the click. "Mom?"

"Ash?" Her voice choked, but he could hear the relief, the smile in her words. "Sweetie, why didn't you call me earlier? I was so worried!"

"...Because I didn't want you to worry?"

She let out a wet sniffle that might have been a giggle. "You could have at least given me a kiss goodbye before you packed your bags."

"You would've locked me in your basement until you broke my rebellious spirit."

"Yes, I suppose I would have," she let out a laugh, a real one—snotty, undignified, but he'd take what he could get. After blowing her nose, she added, "But don't flatter yourself, you've never been even remotely rebellious until now."

"Hey!"

"So where are you now? What are you doing?"

She knew very well where he was; she was asking to see if he would lie.

"I… I'm in Holyhead," he answered with a twinge of guilt, sliding off the bed and padding to the creaky old French door which separated him from the elements, "taking in the view from my room. Did you know I have my own balcony? I always said I'd get one some day."

"That… sounds nice. Where is it?"

"The Anchor? I don't know if you remember it."

"That old barn? Ash, please, I raised you with standards."

"Come on, it's not that bad!"

"Have they done anything about those awful vines climbing all over it?"

"... I like those."

She sighed. "You are beyond hopeless."

He stepped out onto the balcony, clicking the paned door shut behind him, and cast his eyes out over the seascape. Before him, further down the bay where the river churned the shore into boggy marshes, the warehouses and canals that marked the refineries loomed from a haze stained gold by the sun. It was interesting to watch the ships come into the port sometimes, huge ones five times taller than the lodge he stood in, and unload their cargo of crude oil and ingots of pig iron. His favourite part of the view, though, was being able to look to his right and see the whole town laid out before him, from the huts on the waterfront on their stilts like insect legs, all the way up the concrete tiers to the most expensive homes high on the hillside, hugging the cliffs of Siren Rock as though they would fall should they ever let go. Some of those villas had three floors and dozens of windows; he could see them glitter in the sunlight. "I could take a great photo from here."

"Save it for your friends if you do… I don't ever want to see that place again."

Unpleasant silence stretched between them. She was right, of course—Holyhead took everything from them and cast them out for the wolves. At any point, it could take even more.

"Ash… please, come home. I know it's silly, but… I can't help but think I'll lose you too if you stay there."

He released the sigh that had built up inside, running his free hand through his mousy scruff of hair, and turned his back to the sea to lean against the railing. "I have to find out what happened. I _need_ to."

"He's gone. Wherever he is now, I don't think justice really matters to him any more."

"I'm not doing this for him.I'm doing this for you. For me."

Something rustled in the overgrown jungle that might have been the inn's backyard, once, something big and heavy. Frowning, Ash leaned over the balcony and peered into that wilderness of thorns and branches, but the perpetrator was nowhere to be found. An alligator, maybe? They didn't usually wander this far from the river.

He swore he heard footsteps when he was walking home, too, but had written them off as echoes of his own bouncing from the seawalls. Now he was starting to feel paranoid.

"Ash? Are you there?"

"Yeah, sorry, I was just… thinking." He went back inside and, after a moment's hesitation, locked the door to his room. Sometimes Mr. Cooper would totter upstairs to bring him a plate of toast, muttering something about fattening him up, but today he would just have to wait.

"A friend of mine knows someone at Google who'd love to take a look at your work. Opportunities like that don't come up very often... you're wasted down there. You have your whole life ahead of you, don't spend it dwelling on the past." Her voice trembled. "Don't make my mistake."

"We deserve answers." His fingers tightened around the phone until it shuddered in his grip. "I'm not going to let them bury him and pretend he never existed."

"But—" Her voice faltered. "I...just look after yourself, all right?"

"I will."

"Make sure you're eating properly! No noodles."

"I promise. I'll call you again soon, okay?"

"Okay, sweetie. I love you."

He smiled. "I love you too."

He felt better for getting that guilt, that weight, off his chest, but… their conversation only reminded him of how utterly alone he felt. He left his friends and family behind to come here, to this hostile little town where just the mention of his name turned heads. If he needed help, he had no one to turn to.

No, that wasn't true. Louise cared and she didn't even know him. There were good people here, too.

Setting the phone on his bedside table, he sat back down and reached once more for his laptop. In the data he had dumped onto his tablet, he found some references to a second restaurant. They were just old emails that weren't properly deleted, someone squabbling about settling some outstanding bills still attached to the place, and didn't name it explicitly as a Freddy's establishment.

But that was all he needed.

He knew as soon as he walked into the pizzeria that it was all wrong, that it wasn't the place he wandered as a child. His mind tried to convince him otherwise, finding other excuses for why he couldn't find his memories lingering there, for why his feet remembered different paths through the hallways and often led him to the wrong room, why the robots seemed so alien to him despite representing the same characters. Now he knew exactly what those buildings were, those half-forgotten silhouettes in the mist at the foot of Siren Rock.

A quick search on Google and he pinpointed them on a map of Holyhead, nestled in the hook where the jagged fangs of the rock met the slopes of the hill that built up behind it over the millennia, not far from the old pier. The place wasn't marked as Freddy Fazbear's Pizza or any other variation on the brand that he expected, but as the Mariner's Guild Historic Estate—interesting. The central building, the largest by far, was a shipyard which backed onto a series of old drydocks, according to the map. Nearest the road was the Guild Hall and, at the rear of the property where cliffs met the seawall, a series of storage sheds. Nothing about them indicated that this was, once, a children's restaurant, but this was the place. It had to be. Seeing them laid out before him stirred faint memories within, little more than shadows and blurred shapes, a glimpse of the sun dipping behind one building and peeking out from behind another. And looming over everything, crystal clear from the fog, the great, black rock.

He had a lot of reading to do.

* * *

" _Ashley."_

Half-remembered places called his name. He blinked, once, twice, and found himself alone in an empty hallway. And everywhere he looked, water—trickling from the ceiling, down the walls, pooling across the flagstones beneath his feet. Mould bloomed across the wooden panelling in the trails it left behind.

Drip, drip, drip.

His fingers met shredded curls of paper, black with mildew. Posters, peeling from the walls, of a bear, a rabbit and a wolf. Beloved faces stared up at him with dark eyes smudged down their cheeks like tears. Once, they might have been golden. Something about them… hurt, razorwire coiled around his bleeding heart. And when he heard the sobbing, whisper soft, echo from the walls, it dug in and wouldn't let him go. Helpless, a fish on a hook, he let it pull him into the darkness that waited for him at the end of the wall.

It reached out to him, wrapping around him and drawing him in. Damp air clung to him and sucked the warmth from his skin. Water splashed around his ankles with every step. There, before him in the T-intersection where three corridors met, a door. Much taller than him and wider too, four inches thick of steel with broken bolts jutting from its frame. Not from someone breaking in—but something breaking _out._

The metal was cool beneath his fingertips and it swung free on silent hinges, inviting him in.

" _Come to me."_

Its voice cut him open, the chiming song of a thousand knives sharp enough to slice the wind, through his heart, right to his soul. It prickled his skin with goosebumps and countless tiny cuts, kisses from a razor. From somewhere in the void beyond the threshold he could hear the tinkling of a music box, softly plucking out a familiar tune. And there, louder now, that crying in a voice he knew.

Something lunged from within and brought the shadows with it, engulfing him. A flash of metal claws and jaws brimming with too many teeth, like ivory knives, and a scream, the shriek of warping metal, that raised the hair on his skin. And empty eye sockets, darker than black, that pulled him in. Its talons bit into his arms.

" _You are mine."_

* * *

Ash stirred at the angry buzzing from somewhere over his door, winching his eyelids slowly apart before crying out and shutting them again. It was late afternoon now and the sun, rosy golden and beginning its descent behind the headland for the day, burned straight through the balcony door and into his eyes. Next time he would remember to shut the curtains. Groaning, he struggled into a sitting position, the covers tangled around his legs.

How long was he out for? He glanced at his phone; too long. Tumbling from the mess of sheets and onto his feet, he staggered to the bathroom to brush his teeth. And when he flicked on the light, the angry red welts stood out on his arms, clear as day. Just like before.

What sort of dream left marks in the real world?

The buzzer blared at him again. Mr. Cooper wanted him for something, probably to ask him why there were three plates of toast and jam going cold outside his door instead of in his stomach. But right now the thought of food made him sick. His heart hammered in his throat as he struggled into his uniform and packed his bag for the night. Keys, torch, water bottle—check. After a moment's thought, he added his tablet. Something told him he would need it again.

Mr. Cooper looked up at him with shrivelled, narrow eyes when the squeaking of the stairs announced his arrival. "'Bout time, boy. Overslept?"

"It'll take a while to get used to these hours."

He harrumphed, his enormous caterpillar eyebrows knitted together, and flapped out his newspaper before disappearing back behind it. "Ech! There ain't no good'll come of working in that place, mark my words. Now fishing, there's good, honest work. Someone came in here asking after you. Making a bahbin, him was. Told him to wait outside if it's that dang important."

Ash's fingers curled themselves into fists. He told no one that he lived here and Mr. Cooper, in spite of his many colourful flaws, was not one to gossip about his tenants.

Someone really did follow him home.

"I—I'll go talk to him right away," he muttered, "thanks for getting me up. I'll see you later."

There was no one by the door when he went out to investigate. Nor was there anyone on the front lawn, the only part of the grounds Cooper bothered to maintain, the enormous rusted anchor on proud display on its plinth. He claimed it was from the Midnight Rose, flagship of Sir Arthur Rambley, the port's wealthy patron, which sank on the Siren's fangs one stormy night.

Increasingly uneasy, he edged out onto the sidewalk for a quick glance up and down the road. It was deserted, and getting dark now that the sun had dipped behind the hill. Someone was there—he could feel their eyes on him. But that someone didn't want to be seen.

He had to go back inside.

Boots scuffed behind him. He made to sprint for the door, but before he took even one step powerful arms seized hold of him, one across his face to stifle his cries for help, the other around his torso and pinning his own to his sides. He smelled leather and kerosene and anger, and knew exactly who pulled him, kicking and struggling, from the roadside.

That man with eyes of steel, the man who had stared him down at Rambley's. Mike Schmidt.

He fought, he dug in his heels, but the strength wound like coiled springs into those muscles could break him in half. His mind told him that he should save his energy for another battle, wait for a moment of weakness and make his move then. But it wasn't his mind he was listening to.

It scratched at its bars within, begging him to unleash it, just one more time. White-hot, an unbearable, terrible light—it would burn away this meddler until he blew like dust into the wind. He wanted to tell it to stop, but that hand over his mouth muffled his pleas. He wanted to push it away, but it dug into his shoulders, into his heart.

Please don't make me face it, he begged in silence. Don't bring those nightmares back.

The high wooden fence on his right told him that they were down the private residential lane that ran around and behind the Anchor; the people here were likely sitting down, saying grace before dinner and blissfully unaware of what was happening outside their doors. Schmidt dragged him towards a black rally car hidden under the willow tree whose leaves he so often heard tap-tapping on the roof of the lodge—the trunk was open. A metal coffin just for him.

His limbs locked up and the blood froze in his veins, and something broke inside him.

He bit down on the man's hand. Skin and sinew tore under his teeth. When he felt his grip loosen, he drove an elbow into that spot below his ribcage where he knew the diaphragm was. Winded, he let go of him to clutch at his chest, but Ash didn't run. He spat the coppery taste from his mouth and lashed out, felt his knee connect with an abdomen, and the force sent an electric jolt through his bones. The caged light burned, calling for justice—for blood.

Fingers like iron closed around his fist, forcing it away. Still he stood his ground, still he fought. Those cold blue eyes locked onto his and in them he saw uncertainty.

Fear.

Schmidt was afraid of _him._ His strength faltered. He blinked and in that moment it was Donovan, that boy who used to bully him, staring back at him with terror in his eyes. His face, twisted in agony, covered in scratch marks by his own hands.

The fire inside him crumbled to ashes and he buckled under his grip. Without the anger, he was just weak and scared. He was nothing.

A fist slammed into the side of his head and he cried out as he hit the asphalt. Hands seized him around his middle and by his clothes and he could only hang there, limp, as he was hauled off the ground and forced into the trunk.

This was it, then, he thought as his bag was thrown in after him. He was going to die.

"This is for your own good, kid."

The lid slammed shut and his world became darkness.

* * *

When the car finally pulled over, he had lost all concept of time. Minutes, hours? It made no difference. Trapped in his coffin, it felt like a lifetime.

He couldn't breath. Tears choked his throat and ran in hot streams down his cheeks, sticky with mud and dust and the lingering stench of gasoline. The engine cut out and a car door clicked open. Shivering, he sank his teeth into the back of his hand to stifle the sobs which tore their way free.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside. With a rush of fresh air he felt the trunk pop open, felt the shadow of his captor hanging over him. He uncurled his fingers from white-knuckled fists and reached as far as he dared for the breeze, cool and inviting, waiting for him outside. His eyes flicked up to that face above him, half-hidden in the shadow of a hood, and saw him hesitate at his glazed stare, his dirty face, the blood smeared over his hands and mouth. It was with a gentler grip than before that he hauled him from the trunk and onto the roadside.

He didn't fight him; there was no point. He had already seen the outline of a holster against his jacket and knew exactly what was waiting for him. So he stayed kneeling there on the gravel, ignoring the countless tiny teeth that bit into the palms of his hands.

They had stopped on one of the interstate highways, raised up on dirt banks above a dead expanse of still water, where nothing grew, nothing lived, but withered grey trees which beckoned to him from the mist. In other marshes there would be a steady background hum of crickets, punctuated by the occasional croak of a frog like a bass drum to a quartet of strings. Here, there was only one sound—the lap of foul water at the levy, waiting for him.

The barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his head. "'Ands on your 'ead, nice and slow."

" _You could end this,"_ whispered that little voice as he obeyed without complaint. He could—but it was better to die than to become that monster he kept caged inside.

"See this 'ere road? 'Bout twenty minutes to the north there's a town on the intercity route. Walk there, catch the first bus out of this godforsaken place and don't ever come back."

He jumped as his backpack thumped down next to him.

"I'll know if you do."

More than ever before, Ash felt painfully aware of the thump of his heart in his chest as those boots crunched away on the gravel. He was breathing. He was _alive._ He wanted to ask why, what on earth this point of this was, but knew better than to push his luck. So he waited with a dry throat and held breath as the car door slammed, as the engine roared to life, as Schmidt sped off back down the road to the south and into the encroaching fog.

The warm glow of street lights shimmered between the twisted branches ahead, so close, closer than Holyhead. If he set off now, soon enough he could be tucked up in a warm hotel bed with hotcakes and tea, watching Mythbusters as he nursed his wounded body and pride. It was so cold when the wind blew from the sea. Yet his eyes turned inexorably south, into the mist, the darkness. There, just over the treetops, he could see it, taste the salt on the air as it whispered onto the shore—calling his name.

Blind fingers wrapped around the strap of his bag and he eased himself onto numb feet. The wind came to him, running soft hands over his cuts and bruises; if it could speak, he would imagine it tutting and clucking its tongue. The shadows of the death trees shifted and reached out, turning him around and ushering him gently back onto the road, to the south, to forgotten buildings waiting for him in the shadow of the spire. To the creak of a buckled steel door, cool under his fingers, and infinite blackness beyond.

Fixing his gaze on the shadow of the sea, so far away, he let it call him home.

* * *

Jeremy straightened up as he tugged open the door, his features creased in worry. "Man, the skipper's been driving himself up the wall trying to call you, he wanted you to come in ear—Ashley?"

He stumbled into the foyer and let the door swing shut behind him, leaving a red smear across the glass. The motion of pulling on it had reopened the jagged, crescent-shaped wound torn into the back of his hand, blood trickling sluggishly down his fingers. His legs buckled, then crumpled beneath him and sent him onto his knees.

"H—holy shit!" Jeremy dropped his mop and sped from the room, his sneakers slipping and squeaking on freshly polished tiles. "Eric! ERIC!"

"What's going on in—Ash!"

He heard the sharp clack of work shoes approaching, felt strong, scarred hands on his shoulders, and jerked away. One settled instead on his forehead, checking for fever.

"Ash, talk to me. Who did this to you?"

Slowly he raised his head. He saw wiry auburn hair and warm eyes like honey, peering at him over glasses, and a mouth pressed thin in worry. Everything hurt—but he couldn't answer. Something stole his voice from him.

"He's gone into shock... Jeremy, go get the first aid kit. Some blankets and hot chocolate too, if you can."

"Y—yessir!"

"Beatrice?"

The security window slid open and that sour-faced woman appeared there. When she saw him crumpled there, filthy and bleeding onto the floor, she hesitated, her expression conflicted, unsure what to say or do.

"Get on the phone to the police. Check the exterior cameras for anything suspicious, too."

"I'm on it."

Ash felt one of Nye's hands on his shoulder again, more carefully this time. He fought back the urge to push him away, to lash out in defence, and let him put an arm around him and help him slowly to his feet. His ankles screamed in protest, but took the punishment. He hadn't realised how much he was shaking. He felt a warm chest beside him and finally broke down, leaning into it for comfort, for protection. Anything that would ease the numbness that fear had left behind.

"Hey, I've got you. You're going to be all right."

For the first time since he met him, he believed him.


	8. Chapter Seven: Reap What You Sow

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

REAP WHAT YOU SOW

* * *

"You're lucky to have escaped without a concussion."

Nye scowled as he fussed over the ugly purple bruise forming on Ash's temple. He had commandeered the staff cafeteria for his triage room and swaddled his patient in so many blankets that he gained an intimate understanding of how it felt to be a caterpillar. Muttering what sounded like threats of violence, he upended the contents of the first aid kit all over the nearest table and picked through the heap for a gauze of the right size and shape and, finding none, instead hacked a larger piece apart with scissors.

From his limited observations, Ash had painted him as the sort of man who was slow to anger and slower to forgive. It was... nice, knowing he cared enough to worry like this. But he didn't care enough to warn him about the animatronics. He didn't care enough to tell him the truth.

…He didn't know what to think any more.

"How bad is it?" His words scratched over cracked lips that still tasted of blood. He glanced away and into the depths of the mug of chocolate going cold in his fingers, but his stomach was tied into knots and the thought of trying to put anything in it made him queasy.

"It's not pretty, but... it could've been much, much worse." His eyes flashed as he grabbed for the bottle of antiseptic with more force than necessary and sent it skittering across the table. "Damn it—what sort of—of animal hits a defenceless person in the head?"

The sort scared for his life. If Ash hadn't seen the fear in his eyes, if he hadn't seen the face of his old bully staring back at him, condemning him for the blood on his hands… grimacing, he drank to drown the taste of bile rising in his throat. The mug shook in his grip until its contents splashed onto the tiles.

Nye took it from him without a word and set it down on the table. He exchanged the scissors for cotton wool and antiseptic, his expression softening into a smile. "This is going to sting a bit."

Ash squeezed his eyes shut as he pushed wavy locks of hair, crisp with dried blood, out of the way and dabbed gently at the graze. The caustic stench of disinfectant filled his nose. He focused instead on the warmth of his hand, keeping his head still as he cleaned and dressed the wound with trained efficiency.

"You're one of my better patients," he remarked, sitting back to admire his handiwork.

"You do this often?"

"I'm the only certified first aider on the night shift and _some_ of our staff," he shot a sidelong glance at Jeremy as he scurried into the room with a steaming bowl of water in his arms, "are accident prone."

"I won't drop it, skipper, I swear." He found a spot on the table that wasn't covered in bandages and set it down, grinning at Ash. "You're, like, _totally_ badass. I can't wait to tell Louise."

Nye almost dropped the bottle he was measuring from. "Y—yes, thank you Fitzgerald, that's quite enough! You should really be getting home."

"But—"

"That's an order."

Jeremy's smile was one of smug accomplishment as he clicked his heels in a salute. "Aye aye, skipper!"

He watched him leave, exhaling, then returned to his task with unsteady hands. "She's going to kill me," he said under his breath as he soaked a clean cloth, then, louder, "right, let's take a look at that hand."

It was with more reluctance than before that Ash let him take hold of his hand and start wiping away the blood dried onto his skin. He looked away, fuming, and sucked in a breath between his teeth as hot water seared the exposed flesh. His fingers curled reflexively. This wasn't the first time he'd bit himself until he bled, but it would likely be the first to scar. He wasn't certain how he felt about that.

The man paused, brows furrowed. "These... they look like bite marks. Ash, did you do this to _yourself?"_

"I..."

"I'm not going to hurt you. You can talk to me."

"He..." His voice choked. "H—he locked me in the trunk of his car."

"And you're claustrophobic, aren't you?" The flicker of barely restrained fury in his eyes, like golden sparks spitting from a wildfire, was unmistakable as he went back to cleaning the blood from the injury. He was as gentle as ever as he applied a fresh gauze and wound a bandage around his hand, but Ash couldn't ignore the way his fingers shook. "I promise I'll do everything I can to make sure he's held accountable, but you're going to have to tell me what happened. Did you see who he was?"

It would be easy to grit his teeth and say that had never met him before in his life; no one would question him. But he knew that face, knew that voice, even his name, more than he should from a single encounter at the café on the docks. "Mike Schmidt. He grabbed me from outside my apartment and dumped me on the side of the highway, somewhere between here and Werewood." His fingers dug painfully into his arm through the blankets. "He told me not to come back."

Running a trembling hand over his face, Nye drew a deep, slow breath and let it out even slower. "I wish I could be surprised that he's responsible. When I get my hands on him I'll—and you walked all the way back? Damn it, Ash, why didn't you call me? You know I would have dropped everything to come and get you."

It never occurred to him. As far as he knew, he was sleepwalking—he had no memory of the trek along that lonely road. Just shapes and whispers until he woke and realised he was standing in the shadow of the pizzeria with burning calves and blisters on his feet. Glad now for the blankets heaped on him, he clutched them tighter around himself with his free hand. He couldn't shake the deep chill that had settled into his bones.

Nye huffed at his silence, wringing out his cloth into the bowl. "Are you sure you want to do your shift tonight? I'd be more than happy to fill in for you until you feel better."

His hands curled into fists. "I'm fine."

"If you say so, but I really think you should go home. You've been through a lot."

"I'm _fine."_

"Do you have any other injuries?"

"No," said Ash, jerking away from him.

But he caught the lie and took hold of his arm with a firm hand, pushing up the sleeve to expose the red lines raised on the skin. He clucked, brows furrowing over his glasses. "These scratches… did he do this?"

"No."

"Then who did?"

Rusted metal with jagged edges, digging into his flesh. Even now he could feel them there, cold, waiting to drag him away. A shiver scuttled across his skin and down his spine. That stern gaze burned into him and he turned away, wrapping his arms tight around himself as if they alone could keep out the chill. But nothing could. "I… I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, that's your decision. I'll respect that. But I can't help if you won't tell me what's wrong."

"Why should I?" The words came tumbling out and he couldn't stop them. Shock had chained the anger that growled inside, unappeased, and numbed the prick of its claws and teeth, but couldn't muzzle it; it threw accusations like stones at a crow. "You didn't bother to mention the 'safety risks.'"

They struck true—he could tell from the deadening of his eyes as he checked the scratches for places where they broke the skin. "I take it you paid _them_ a visit, then."

"So when were you planning to tell me?"

"About the animatronics? I was hoping you'd actually listen to me and it would never come to that."

Ash wrenched his arm from his grip and turned on him, fury lighting the tear tracks down his cheeks on fire. "I don't care, you should've said something!"

"And would you believe me if I did?"

"You think I haven't seen my fair share of things I can't explain? The things I've—" He drew in a shuddering breath. No. He didn't owe him an explanation. What happened on that day, what happened when he lost control, that was his burden to bear alone. "Does it matter?"

He only looked backed at him impassively, those eyes impossible to read. "I don't enjoy keeping secrets, Ash. But things are secret here for a very good reason. I'm sorry I can't explain it any more than that."

The blankets crumpled to the floor as he stood, swaying for a moment on feet too tired to cope with the change. "It's midnight," he muttered, and they both knew it. Not because of the chiming of the clock on the wall, but because at midnight this place came alive. The liminal point between one day and the next, the moment when the brittle framework that imposed sense and order on the world was at its weakest. Here, at this place that skulked in the murk at the borders of reality, anger was restless.

It was time to start his shift.

He shuffled to the door and hesitated, caught on the threshold. "Uh, Mr. Nye?"

"Yes?"

"I… thanks for patching me up."

His lips curved upwards, but it couldn't quite be called a smile. "You're welcome."

Turn left, down the hall… thankfully, the last guard didn't lock the door. He didn't think his ankles could take having to kick it open. The security office didn't seem so bad compared to the trunk of a WRX. But he didn't shut the door behind him, not all the way—just the thought of it made the air feel close and heavy. Breathe, just breathe, it would be okay

She didn't log out, either, and a half-finished game of solitaire was still up on the desktop. Evidently the afternoon shift was an altogether different experience. He closed it—she wasn't doing well anyway—and brought up the camera system to find that the animatronics were already active on the main stage, crisscrossed in black and white by moonlight and shadows. Dark corners concealed eyes that looked back at him, watching, waiting. Waiting for what? His mind painted pictures of them coming for him, of them holding him down, kicking and screaming, while they poured that darkness into his heart, and his stomach lurched.

Once was quite enough.

If the company had any sense, they would review and doctor any incriminating footage the morning after. Too bad; he came prepared. With a glance over his shoulder and through the crack in the door, just to be sure, he plugged in his tablet, set the recording software running and hid it under the keyboard.

Overlooking the arcade on camera 8A, Foxy took pride of place on a stage of his own. He stood hand on hip, hook brandished over an audience of game cabinets and empty chairs. Only Ash remained to hear his stories. And as he watched, that grizzled snout turned to stare at him through the screen. One crooked finger rose to press against fangs that gleamed in the half-light.

Shh, can you hear it?

He could, the raindrop chiming of a song only he knew, the song played by the music box he kept hidden in a cookie tin under his bed. The hair on his arms, on the back of his neck, stood on end, electric tension plucking goosebumps across his skin. It spoke to him, things he couldn't understand, things that had yet to fall into place.

It would show him.

Something darted across the window. Glancing up, a different room appeared where the foyer was supposed to be, one that tugged at something in his memory. Blackened posters, discarded party hats, a trailing banner that still said 'happy birthday'. And water, everywhere, leaving ruin wherever it touched. It was a reflection; beyond it, past the filthy glass, old buildings knelt in the rain. And in that reflection, a shadow. Rusted metal. Jaws bristling with ivory blades. Those holes where its eyes should be, looking into him, pulling him into _them._ He couldn't tear his gaze away.

Its teeth brushed his ear and a voice slid out, a voice like dead leaves scratching on a gravestone. _"Come."_

He turned, and it was gone. The banner shifted where it passed. There was a desk, and on it a single CRT monitor, ugly and beige and humming under a flickering light. It displayed a scene he numbly recalled from another place, another time, a tidy room with new arcade cabinets that didn't belong here in this crumbling tomb. Static consumed the screen, prickling under his fingers, and when it cleared Foxy was no longer on his stage. He couldn't remember why that was important.

He obeyed without question, past the abandoned party favours lying, forgotten, where they fell, past the poster with its three golden mascots. His feet found stairs in the gloom, but he was in no danger of falling; they knew the way. They led him down, past a landing scattered with loose papers and down again, all the way to the ground floor, where the water dripped from the walls and rippled on the flagstones underfoot. Ahead of him was a long, narrow corridor, and at its end, the broken steel door.

Still the music box clinked and whirred as he followed it into the darkness. His lips formed the words in silence, words lost to time but written into his bones. And from beyond a voice rose in answer, a different voice, one of singing blades and blood on an altar.

" _We have been waiting for you."_

The hinges wailed as he reached out for the handle.

"ASH!"

He started, blinked, and there was no water, no rot, no crumbling ruin. And there was no door swinging open under his fingers. Instead, they met rough brown felt.

The bear's eyes glinted from sunken pits, glazed over in a parody of death. His mouth lolled open to display nested jaws, two sets of teeth, both cracked and yellowed and strung with hair and sinew like a bone harp. Metal supports in a wide barrel chest creaked and buckled under the swell of unnatural breath, hot and sticky as it groaned from the blackness of that maw. And the _stench._ It reeked of decay, of bodies rotting in the damp.

No—this was all wrong. Freddy was supposed to be a leader, a role model, a figure for children to look up to. He wasn't… _this._ This animated corpse, reaching for him with stiff, dead fingers.

Nausea writhed in his gut like worms. Wake up—he screamed in silence as they brushed the dirty tracks streaked down his cheeks. Wake up! WAKE UP!

He cried out and tore himself away, staggering backwards on weak, shaking legs, back into a firm chest. Trapped. This wasn't a dream he could wake himself from—this was his reality. He lashed out with bared nails, anything to get away, to get out. Hands closed around his wrists, warm ones, alive.

"Damn it, it's me! Come on!"

And he was dragged away, towards a yawning archway that promised no shelter or respite. His mind floundered, reaching out for something, anything, that could anchor him in the present before he slipped under the black again. Red hair, the flash of glasses, a golden arrow on the wall.

Nye. The pizzeria.

"Good to have you with us," he groused, a bleeding scratch raked into one eyebrow.

 _SCREEEE—_

That was a sound that froze the blood in Ash's veins. The teeth-grinding shriek of fingernails on a blackboard, of metal on metal, the sound of bolts tearing from a stage. Industrial-strength alloy, each one the size of his thumb; he didn't want to imagine how much it cost for a complete set.

Even those couldn't hold them.

And Nye… he came to get him. Even with two good legs, he would never make it to the security room. He knew that. He could have left him to the animatronics, to the dark… but he didn't.

His leg dragged and he staggered. "Get back to the office!" He grimaced, clutching at it. "And lock that door behind you!"

A part of Ash was all too eager to comply. It wanted to run, to slam the door right in his face and let him reap what he sowed. Then he thought of that look in his eyes when he shouted at him, after he cleaned and dressed his injuries without expecting a thing in return.

Damn it.

He threw an arm around his midsection and hauled as much of his weight onto his shoulder as he could stand. His knees buckled, but refused to give. "Ugh, why do you have to be so tall?"

"Are you ever going to listen to me?" Nye snapped, but it was with obvious relief that he leaned on him and let him take the weight from his injured knee. Together they bolted for the office as clanging footsteps filled their ears.

This was the most dangerous three-legged race he'd ever been in.

Down the hall, Foxy lurched from the break room with a crash of feet and snapping fangs, a hulking shadow visible only by those flamelight pinpricks where his eyes should be. The shriek of his joints made the hair on Ash's neck stand on end. The door to the office was between them.

"Just _go!_ I can handle them!"

But those eyes pierced him, froze him in place. The song crawled like black butterflies from the walls.

"Y—Y—Yaaargh, avast me hear—hearties! W—wel—SKRK—welcome to Cap'n Foxy's c—crew."

A hook flashed in the dark. He pushed Nye out of the way, just as he heard the snap and squeal of releasing springs that told him he was about to find out why staff called him 'the flying fox'.

And he _flew_ , clearing the distance in a single bound. Time stood still, just Ash and those vast jaws bearing down on him. He felt, in agonising slow motion, that enormous hand as it curled around his chest, as it snatched him from his feet and into the air. He felt the jolt as the animatronic landed on curled toes and skidded to a halt. Motors clicked and whirred as he lifted him, as though he was little more than a toy, to eye level, but there were no eyes to look into—all that remained was black, empty sockets.

His jaw moved as if forming words but only static came out.

" _It's me."_

The blackness spilled from his eye sockets and mouth. He trembled, head forced back at an unnatural angle as it prised his jaws apart, that dark, mechanical babbling reaching fever pitch. In it Ash heard the name of… something, that made shivers crawl like maggots over his skin. It touched him and a scream tore from his throat.

" _Stay with me Ashley."_

He scrabbled with blind hands for something, anything, he could use to free himself, as the fox turned and lumbered for the main hall. His fingers brushed the baton thrust through his belt and tugged it free. It trembled in his grip, eager for blood. He raised it like a dagger in a white-knuckled fist.

The anger, the light, growled inside, clawing at the bars that held it at bay. With all his strength he brought the baton down into one of those gaping eye sockets.

"Fuck. YOU!"

Foxy's screech could shatter glass as he let go to clutch at what was left of his eye, the baton lodged deep into the socket. Ash hit the tiles and rolled, crying out at the jolt to his already battered body. But the fight wasn't over—it wasn't until the light went out. He forced himself back onto his feet, burning, and with a roar that wasn't his voice he planted his fist into the robot's chest. The acrid stench of smoking felt, the satisfying crunch of plastic and wires crumpling under the force. It felt good.

He tore it free and went to strike again. A hand closed around his raised fist, but he knew that warmth now. Reluctantly, he let him pull him away from his fallen opponent—the others were coming.

"You're completely insane, you know that?"

A bellow of fury tore from the dark as the baton whizzed past his ear and bounced off the wall. "Tell me off when we're not about to die!" He seized Nye around the middle again and pulled his arm across his shoulder, and together they hobbled for the shelter of the security door, the scratches in its surface glinting in the trickle of light that escaped the office. Trampling feet shook the walls and floor behind them; they might well have been running from a train.

Breath fanned across his back; he felt his hair shift with every pant. They weren't going to make it. A hand clamped around his leg, pulling his feet out from under him. He cried out, saw the ground rushing to meet him, blinked, and... nothing.

No light, no sound—only blackness. He choked, but no air rushed to his lungs. All he had was Nye's arm around his shoulder, but he couldn't see him, or feel him, only the faint impression of his weight. Then with a rush and a pop of pressure in his ears he slammed onto the floor of the office, gasping for oxygen like a man drowning. It was stale and stank of old coffee and rat droppings, but holy shit it was _air._ He was breathing, he was alive.

Nye caught himself just in time and slammed the door. He turned and braced his back against it as something heavy crashed into it from the other side. "Ash—the bars!"

Still wheezing, he grabbed hold of a cabinet and pulled himself to his feet, reaching over to punch the button which glared at him like an angry red eye. He watched as Nye leapt away from the door and the bars locked into place, shutting out the howling demon hammering on the other side. The steel rattled, buckled, but held.

They were safe.

Safe. The word tasted bitter in his mouth. Five minutes—it took five minutes for the night to go from bad to catastrophic. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

Taking in the mess he made of the room, he could see that it wasn't a perfect jump; scattered debris knocked from the cabinets marked out a clear path on the floor and there were cracks in the paint on the wall he passed through. And two of Freddy's fingers were twitching by his feet—no wonder he was still banging on the door. He shuddered to think of what might have happened if he failed to bring Nye with him in one piece.

"They're not going to go away, are they?"

"No, not until first light." Nye's legs finally gave out from under him and he leaned against the wall to steady himself, running thin, trembling hands through his hair. It was ruffled beyond all recognition and resembled feathers more than ever. "That... what you did back there... I just, how?"

"I don't know." Ash turned his back on him—he didn't know what to think of him right now—and stooped to pick up the severed fingers and dump them into the pencil holder on the desk. They twitched once more, then fell still. He collapsed into his chair, skin pale and drenched in sweat, his limbs shaking with adrenaline and fear and anger.

"Have you done that before?"

His mouth twisted bitterly. "Once."

Something slammed into the window, hard enough to rattle it against the bars. Ash stared glumly over the monitors. Beyond, his blunt muzzle pressed to the glass, Bonnie stared back. He tugged down the blinds with a clatter, shutting out the hulking figure silhouetted there, fingers splayed against the glass. "I was in middle school... a few of the older kids got the bright idea to shut me in my locker. By the time anyone noticed I was missing..."

The lines on Nye's face creased into a frown at the mention of bullying, but he was old and wise enough to realise it was a sore topic and said nothing. Instead, he hauled himself up onto one of the cabinets with a groan and perched there like an owl, his bad leg hanging at an odd angle. "I… understand if you don't want to come back, after this." His eyes darkened. "None of the others did."

"I'm not leaving."

"Why _are_ you here? With your degree you could be doing an internship at NASA right now. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Yet, here you are."

"Here I am."

He let out a sigh. "You're looking for him, aren't you?"

"That's none of your business."

The sullen response quirked a smile from Nye's lips. "You... look so much like him. Did you know that? It's almost… like he's still here."

It never occurred to Ash that other people would miss him as much as he did. He was everything, his whole world; his disappearance felt too personal to share. But those were selfish thoughts. Uncurling a little from his defensive huddle on the chair, he murmured, "what was he like?"

"Honest. Selfless. A shameless rapscallion and the biggest troublemaker I knew." He looked at him with raised eyebrows. "A trait you seem to have inherited, I think."

"Slander!"

"You used to walk into the diner, carrying the biggest spiders. And you'd come straight to me to show them off. 'Look, look what I found!' It was calculated malice, you knew exactly what you were doing."

"Spiders are great."

"Spiders are disgusting."

"They probably think _you're_ disgusting. Being so tall, with your two beady eyes and your four limbs." Ash wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

"I see we have a comedian on our hands." Nye dug in his pocket and extracted a cigarette. "Do you mind?"

"Yes, but I don't blame you."

Taking that to mean 'go ahead', he lit it in trembling fingers and raised it to his lips. After a deep drag, he glanced over at Freddy, pressed against the hallway window with his breath fogging the glass. One well-aimed kick at the toggle bar and those blinds came crashing shut, too. With the world shut away and out of sight, they could almost forget the monsters with blood on their teeth and darkness in their eyes.

Almost.

"Mr. Nye…"

He glanced back at him with one brow raised, as if to say, 'really?'

"Uh… Eric. Thank you for coming to help me." It felt strange, using his name. With people he didn't trust, that clinical separation of the person from the name kept some unseen boundary between them, maybe not a wall, but a screen to hide the most vulnerable parts of himself. But Nye—Eric, he was warm, understanding. He treated him like a person, not an employee to be ordered around. And he came to pry him from Freddy's grip when doing so put himself in danger. "I don't know what happened. I'm still trying to figure it out."

"Gael used to do that too. He'd just… switch off, start wandering away on his own, wouldn't respond to his name." He took another drag. "Don't thank me—please. I don't deserve it. Last time I was in this position, I hid in here like a coward; I judged his life as less than yours and chose to let him die." His mouth twisted and he stubbed out the cigarette on the cold steel cabinet. "I'll never forget the screams."

"Eric."

They looked at each other, and he said again, firmly, "thank you."

For a moment it seemed like he was going to argue. But he slumped back against the wall, weary lines carved into his features, and a thin smile worked its way across his lips. "And thank you for being too stubborn to listen to me."


	9. Chapter Eight: Enter the Dragon

**A/N:** This is the first completely new chapter since I finished editing! There are probably mistakes, but I think I fine-tuned my style a bit more during the break (I'm still sorry it took so long though.) If Ash seems a little out of character in this chapter, he's grumpy and too tired to give a shit any more, so he's being more bold and snarky than usual. He'll be back to his usual sweet, shy self once he's had a nap.

* * *

 **CHAPTER EIGHT**

ENTER THE DRAGON

* * *

Ash got changed in the bathroom. It wasn't his first choice, but apparently he couldn't go home, not yet. No one would tell him why. The bitter twist of Eric's lips when he broke the bad news told him that this was just another one of those things he had to do.

Why did he stay here, then? Why did he keep himself chained to this place if he hated it so much?

That's fine. This is what he expected, that there had been enough 'incidents' for there to be some kind of procedure in place. No one left until until every last scrap of evidence was swept under the rug. He wondered what he would find if he peeked beneath it. Dust. Secrets. A skeleton or two.

His palms brushed the long, ugly bruises hidden under his T-shirt, where Foxy's fingers dug into his ribcage. Those guards before him… did any of them die? He wasn't sure he wanted to know. The thought of Nye… Eric, taking mutilated bodies out to the swamp in the trunk of his car made him uneasy.

In spite of everything, he couldn't say for certain that he could trust him. Depend on him, yes, but trust was a precious thing to give to someone who tore out his heart and hid it away from the world, from Ash. It did hurt, a little, that he didn't think he would respect his boundaries. But he expected that too. Empathy, like all of those things that made him… different, those things he tried to hide, it was a double-edged sword. He was used to the cuts by now.

What he said to him last night, that he wouldn't leave… did he really mean it?

His eyes looked back at him from the mirror, star-cursed blue. They burned him, branded him with their judgement, their accusations, and he knew eyes couldn't lie. He knew what happened when he let the darkness take him, but he still didn't stop it—he couldn't. His fingers ghosted over the cut on his cheek left from when he was last taken, when the thing wearing his father's face touched him and called him 'little star'. He thought of sitting alone in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by dented, broken lockers. He thought of that one man, the one who dared to raise a hand against his mother, fleeing from him into the night. His fist inches from Schmidt's face, his hands around Donovan's neck. And that feeling, that rush as he beat Foxy to the floor, relishing the crunch of plastic and parts under his hand. Did the Devil really have blue eyes?

Maybe, in his own twisted way, Mike was right. He didn't belong here. The place was already changing him, and if he stayed… he wasn't sure he liked what he could become.

He forged these shackles for himself. Soon enough they would drag him to the depths—one misstep was all it would take. One mistake. One slip of the tongue. He didn't know what he would find at the bottom of that abyss.

" _And when you fall_ _…_ _I will be waiting for you._ _"_

He lunged for the light switch. They hummed to life with a spit and a crackle. And, like a bad dream, it was gone. He didn't want people to know he was in here—but he should have known better. In the dark he was never alone.

The door creaked open as he fluffed his hair in the mirror. Clumps of dried blood clung to the strands here and there, but hopefully it wasn't noticeable. He didn't want to give people another reason to stare at him.

"Hey," Jeremy said, "skipper told me you'd be in here. Still alive, then?"

"Vaguely."

"Did you see any ghosts?"

Ash hesitated. "No."

"Oooh my god! You totally saw a ghost!"

"Don't," he said, more sharply than he meant. A sigh escaped from deep within and he rubbed at the hollows beneath his eyes. "Just… don't. Please."

"Here."

Something pressed into his fingers. A steaming cup, 'Rambley's' stamped on the side in red. Its warmth, its earthen scent, it flushed through him and burned away the dust and cobwebs gathering in the dark places inside. He didn't know what to say. "I… t—thank you."

"No problem my dude. It's not Starbucks, but I figured you'd need it."

He peeled off the lid and peered into its murky depths—long black. Fair call, if he looked as bad as he felt. "What are you doing back here anyway?"

"She's, like, gonna want to talk to me too." Jeremy wrinkled his nose in obvious disgust. "Again. Now come on, you can't, like, hide in here _all_ morning."

Ash wasn't sure he wanted to find out who 'she' was—but he would soon enough. Stuffing the bloodied remnants of his uniform inside his bag, he followed him out into the hallway.

He wasn't the only one who felt the change in the air. People came and went, casting glances his way as they passed. Not the hustle and bustle of kitchen staff setting up for the day, or cleaners giving the floors one last pass before customers arrived, but aimless wanderers milling in the hall, questions buzzing on their lips. Locked in, looking for answers. They would find none.

"Did something happen?"

"I don't know. No one's saying anything."

"Two days is a new record. They normally last at least a week."

"Is the new guard still here?"

"Is that him?"

He straightened his jacket and tried to dodge the glances, the hushed remarks. "Do l look like I've had my ass kicked all night?" He muttered to Jeremy, stuffing his free hand into his pocket to hide the bandage from view.

"Haha, yeah. But you're better than before. Man, Louise is gonna be _pissed."_

"She's here?"

"You couldn't tell from the trail of debris and shellshocked rookies?" He laughed, pointing out one specimen sulking in the corner, looking daggers at everyone rushing past. "Like, she damn near kicked down the door. She's backstage checking out what you did to Foxy. That was you, right?"

His lips grew tight and pale. "Who else would it be?" As they walked, his toes met something that skittered across the tiles. A baton: crooked, wearing its battle scars with pride, but otherwise intact. Its weight felt comforting in his fingers when he knelt to pick it up. Maybe he was wrong about weapons, maybe in the right circumstances and the right hands they had some good in them. This one saved him from a fate he couldn't imagine.

Jeremy's eyes widened at the sight of it. "Daaaaamn! What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"And it's best you don't."

The voice was stern, crisp, fingers tapping on a polished board room table, snapping shut a purse. He felt her coming, felt the prickling of her eyes on the back of his neck and heard the tap-tap-tap of her shoes. It still made him jump.

And in that moment, he hated her.

He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because she looked like one of his old teachers, the one who never stepped in to help him, or because of the way she peered down at him under her glasses. Maybe it was because she was so obviously a lawyer, one without morals or scruples but cold professionalism to spare—he'd met more than enough to be able to tell at a glance.

"You must be Ashley Fletcher, the one we're all here to see," she said dryly, extending a hand. Her suit was smooth and grey to match the hair she kept pulled back into a bun. "I'm Brooke Carver, Johnson's attorney."

He bit back the need to correct her. After a moment's hesitation, he shook it and with gritted teeth brushed aside all the cruel snap judgements that bled from her to him. She didn't think highly of him and that worked in his favour; if he played dumb and took whatever she handed him, she would underestimate him. But it didn't make her opinion hurt any less.

"Why don't I get a handshake?" Said Jeremy.

The corners of her lips creased downwards. "Because I've had the misfortune of dealing with you a dozen times before, Mr. Fitzgerald. I'm sure we're well acquainted. I'll deal with you first—I'm sure you know the drill."

"Aye aye." He glanced over his shoulder at Ash as he followed her, presumably to his doom, mouthing 'old hag'.

Venom writhed in his innards, a nest of vipers, hissing and spitting. The cup of coffee shook in his hands. He gulped down the rest to feed the frenzy, then let it fall. Numb, he watched it roll away across the tiles, watched the last mouthful pool in the spaces between.

A hand brushed his elbow. "Ash?"

Eric, relief warm on his features, in his smile. But there was worry in his eyes. He snatched back his hand when he wouldn't meet his gaze. "Are you all right?"

He didn't know what to think, or say; words couldn't possibly make sense of the tangle of half-formed feelings bubbling at his lips. "I don't know."

"Did something happen? You were in there for a long time."

"No," he lied, thinking of those shadows that whispered in his ear in the mirror. "I'm just… confused."

"I suppose it's a lot to take in. She's…" he paused, finger to lip, struggling for a word that could express his thoughts on the dragon in their midst. He, too, failed. "She's really something, isn't she?"

Ash made a small, noncommittal noise and turned away. "'Something' isn't the word I would use."

"I won't ask which ones you _would,"_ said Eric with a crooked smile. But for all his walls, his armour, the cracks were showing. The night had taken its toll on the both of them and his mask was beginning to slip, he could see it in the shadows of the lines around his eyes, the curl of his upper lip. "I'm sorry it has to be like this."

"For whose sake, yours or mine?"

"Neither." The smile twisted and turned sour. "Pascal looks out for his credit rating first and all his other… 'assets' after. If the pizzeria bombs he won't be able to flip another business any time soon. But, uh, that's a conversation for another time and place." He looked away, down the corridor, to the star-spangled archway glittering so innocently in the first shafts of morning sunlight which filtered through from the main hall. But he didn't truly see it and its crown of gold and sequins, or the abandoned tables set out for a meal that might not come, or even the wait staff wandering back and forth with their hands in their pockets and cheese rolls in their mouths. His eyes gazed through them at something only he could see, something he lost a long time ago. "I… suppose you'll want to talk to Louise. About what happened."

It was interesting, Ash thought, that of all the things Eric shrugged off without so much as a frown, it was she who could pierce his armour.

"Yeah," he said, chewing on this scrap of information as well as on his lip, "and I need to give Freddy's fingers back."

"What?"

His eyes followed the path traced out in hairline cracks on the tiles, along the floor until they reached that point on the wall where some of the paint had chipped away. Maybe it was best not to mention that accidental dismemberment was a possible side effect. "Nothing."

Eric 'hmphed'. "She'll be pleased to know that you're all right." The way he let the sentence hang made it sound almost like a question.

Was he? Even Ash couldn't say for certain.

He fell into step behind him, wincing at the way his left leg dragged, worse than it had the day before. The creaking stairs cut into the flank of the stage were steep and had no railing. When it became clear that he was struggling, he wound an around around his waist once more and helped to shift the weight from his knee. From the way his lips turned taut and pale, he was embarrassed to need the help.

"I'm, uh, going to stand back here, if you don't mind," he said on the final step, "out of melee range."

Ash shrugged. "Suit yourself." He ducked through the thick black curtain and onto the stage, noting three new slashes ripped into the fabric from where Freddy must have forced his way through. There were clattering sounds coming from parts and service, angry ones, punctuated with the occasional swearword. Sniffling, too, he noted with a pang of guilt.

The animatronics stood in the same places as always, in the same poses with the same predatory grins. Hunched, shapeless forms, eyes glittering in the lone trickle of light that dared to slip through and died on the points of their teeth. The sun would not touch this cold, shrouded corner where the darkness held sway. This was _its_ domain. Here, it had power. Here, it would bide its time… until the spell of midnight set it free.

Clutching the baton to his chest, he edged his way around them, well out of arm's reach, holding his breath as he went. He could feel their eyes on him, feel their gaze pricking the back of his neck. His knuckles tightened on the grip, sharp and white against his skin. The door was cool under his palm as he creaked it open. "H—hello?"

Under the naked light of a single, swinging bulb, Foxy's gutted carcass stood like a taxidermied animal, stiff and lifeless in the grip of rigor mortis. His one remaining eye was half-lidded and glassy—a tangle of cables and chunks of foam hung like viscera from the other socket. More spilled from his slashed open belly. Just a broken robot, something Ash had seen more times than he could possibly count, and yet the sight made bile rise in his throat. All this was because of him.

Louise was busy rifling through wall-mounted drawers of screws and loose, rolling eyeballs, muttering furiously to herself under her breath. At the sound of his voice, she sniffed, wiped her nose on her oil rag, and nodded. "H—hey."

"Hey."

They stood for a moment, her looking at him and him looking at her. Then she broke. "I—fuck—dammit." She pressed white-knuckled fists to her eyes, but tears still leaked free down her cheeks. "Y—you're okay."

"Yeah, I'm okay. Mostly."

At once she bundled him into thick, powerful arms. "I—I swear I checked and checked those bolts, but—"

His first instinct was to squirm out of her grasp—but she wasn't going to hurt him. She needed this, needed to know that he was real, that he wouldn't just break into a thousand pieces when she held him. She needed to clear that guilt from her conscience. Maybe he did, too. "It's not your fault," he said as she sobbed into his shoulder; he was glad he brought his waterproof jacket. "You know that."

"It's my _job_ to keep you safe," she growled, gripping his arms as she pulled away, "and I didn't. Just like… all the others."

"You've done everything you can. You said that yourself." The corner of his tablet dug into his ribs where he stowed it inside his jacket; he didn't trust whoever was in charge of the cover-up not to go through his bag and, now that he'd met her, he wasn't so sure she was above patting him down either. He extracted it, loaded the stolen footage and held it out to Louise. "Here. I... think this is something you need to see. This isn't something you can stop with clamps and bolts."

He already knew what she would see when she took it, brows furrowed, and thumbed through the markers he'd tagged on key parts of the footage. He already knew what made her pause and hand it back. A figure, a jagged form that made no sense to eye or camera. Its presence shattered the image like glass, hissing and spitting static as it reached down with black spindle fingers to rip the bolts from Foxy's feet. But he knew what it was, knew it as he scuffed its shape into the dust at his feet.

The shadow of a metal wolf with the void in its eyes.

When her face crumpled under the weight of shame and failure, squeezing out a fresh cascade of tears, he tugged more tissues from his pocket and pressed the entire packet into her hands.

"Why d'you always have these?"

"I seem to get beaten up a lot."

Louise gave a messy snort, apologised, and blew her nose. "Well, you're in better shape than old Cap'n Foxy. Bastard's gonna think twice before he comes after you again."

His jaw was loose on one side and creaked when she rapped on his crumpled chest panel with her knuckles. There, right where his heart would be if he had one, a gaping black hole, fist-sized and charred around the edges. Metal struts glinted inside. "Care to explain how _this_ happened?"

Ash swallowed. "I... punched him."

She snapped a piece from the edge, inspecting it. The plastic was brittle and glassy, black, like obsidian. "You punched him?"

"Yeah."

"You been training with King Kai? 'Cause apparently your fist burns at three hundred degrees."

"I—wait, you watch Dragon Ball Z?"

"Of course that's the part you chose to focus on. _Nerd._ _"_ Flicking the plastic away, she knelt to fuss over the bumps and scrapes Eric had bandaged. A glower like smouldering coals caught alight in her eyes when she recognised his handiwork and she sat back on her haunches. "Still, he got you good, Bebette. I'm sorry this happened."

On the surface her words were calm, but Ash caught the threatening undercurrent beneath—she wasn't talking about Foxy. So this is what they were arguing about that first night he spent here?

He opened his mouth to tell her that his injuries were from an entirely different incident and the animatronics, in retrospect, had let him off easy. But she worried enough about him as is, and Mike was obviously her friend. It was just one more burden she didn't need. Instead, he muttered, "if he wasn't there to patch me up, It would've been a whole lot worse."

"Don't you dare defend his skinny ass. He almost got you killed."

"He saved me."

"Bull-fucking- _shit_ he did."

"Something… happened last night. Something I can't really explain." Ash met her eyes, hazel to blue—whatever she saw there silenced the protests before they reached her lips. "I—I wasn't myself. If he didn't come to get me…"

Her lips twisted bitterly. "He let all the others die. All of them—just hid in that goddamn office and watched it happen. What makes you so different?"

Shoes clacked on the stage. Not the neat tip-tap of Carver's stilettos, but Eric's distinctive thump and scrape. He felt Louise's hand tighten around his arm, saw her jaw clench, her eyes flash up at him over her shoulder as he approached.

"Get _out."_

It took guts to stand his ground, Ash gave him that. Tall as he was, Louise was taller and twice as wide. He lingered stubbornly in the doorway, arms crossed, but would not set foot in her territory—not with his employee in the line of fire. "Louise, can we talk?" His eyes flickered to him and creased slightly—an unspoken apology. "In private?"

"I got nothing to say to you."

"It's… about what happened last night."

She looked for a moment like she was going to argue, balling her hands into fists until the knuckles threatened to burst at the seams. But her hand strayed to that thin band on her left ring finger where an important part of her was supposed to be and something switched off behind her eyes. "Fine," she muttered, _"fine."_

The PA system whined and crackled overhead. "Ashley Fletcher to the manager's office, thank you."

Taking that as his cue to leave, Ash pulled Freddy's severed fingers from his bag and pressed them into Louise's hand. "Uh, don't ask how that happened, I can't explain that one."

There were so many things he wanted to say—but this was their battle to fight, and he didn't fancy being caught in the crossfire. Dodging their frowns, their questioning glances, he ducked around Eric and past the animatronics, doing his best to ignore that whirring, that telltale prickling of his skin, as they tracked his movements back across the stage and onto the stairs.

It was his turn to enter the dragon's lair.

* * *

Carver had helped herself to Eric's coffee stash, as well as his chair and desk, and sat with his favourite mug cradled in her fingers as she reviewed last night's footage on, thankfully, her own laptop. The blue-white glare exaggerated the draconian hollows of her cheeks and eye sockets.

Ash wasn't about to tell her that it was the same stash that Jeremy tampered with. Evidently, neither had Eric, though he was certain to have figured it out long before now. The thick, meaty stench of the gravy in her cup made his eyes water—how could she possibly miss it? Still, he could tolerate it if it meant getting to see the look on her face when she took her first sip.

He liked to think he wasn't a vindictive person, but he made an exception in this case.

"I hope you know this is for your own good," she said in her best lawyer voice. "We have to keep these… _incidents_ quiet for the protection of the staff. You understand that, don't you?"

"Uh, sure," said Ash, staring at the mug. He could tell it was Eric's favourite because the rim was pale from years of wear and tear and there was a chip right where his thumb would wrap around the handle. It was red and had 'fuck you too' stamped on the side in typewriter lettering: a strange thing for him to have, given his amiable nature and dislike of curse words. There was a story behind it, one he might get to hear some day.

"Very good." She frowned at the intensity of his gaze—many people found it unsettling—but soon deduced that it wasn't directed at her and returned to the footage. "Now, this confirms that you did, in fact, damage the pirate animatronic—"

"Foxy," Ash interrupted. After her first impression he didn't exactly have a high standard to live up to, so why bother?

She sighed. "Foxy, yes. I'm afraid that, as you agreed when you signed your contract, ah, less than forty-eight hours ago, you're liable for the damages."

"With all due respect, if I didn't shove a baton in his eye he would've done a lot more damage to me."

Raising the mug to her lips, her nose scrunched as she caught a whiff of its contents; she made an effort to conceal her disgust, but set it down with too much haste for Ash to be fooled. A glop of gravy spilled free over the lip. "Do you know what else was caught on camera?"

Camera 5b. The one that overlooked the central hallway, covering from the rear entrance to the manager's office. The one that recorded his scuffle with Foxy, his desperate attempt to flee with Eric from Freddy's wrath, then…

The jump. She saw him jump.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. What else was caught on video? What else did she see?

"Now." She let the word hang for dramatic effect, her manicured nails straying to a stack of files, tapping rhythmically on the covers. As much a ringmaster as she was an attorney, then—her kind fed on fear and attention. "I've looked into your background and find your circumstances interesting, to say the least. Unfortunate, but interesting."

"H—how so?"

"You were born here, yes? And I imagine had a… very good reason to leave. It's curious, then, that you chose to come back."

Uncomfortable, now, Ash shifted in his seat. He wasn't sure he liked this game. "You have a lot of dirt on me."

"I am very good at my job, Mr. Fletcher. Now, given your circumstances, I think you have a more vested interest in keeping your silence than most. After all it would be, ah, unfortunate, if the more superstitious residents caught wind of your… quirks. I would hate for them to have a reason to get out the pitchforks again."

Ash felt his lip curl. "Are you threatening me?"

Her smile was thin as she adjusted her glasses on her nose. "As much as you seem to think otherwise, I'm on your side. We can't let this leave these doors, do you understand? It would be bad for business for our night guard to be lynched again."

"Yeah, but—wait— _again?"_

"So, with that in mind, I'm willing to cut you a deal."

"I'm… listening."

"In exchange for your silence and continued employment here, we'll waive the repair bill and ensure that not a word of this, or anything else that might happen, gets out. You have my word."

She was lying. Her thin plastic mask could not disguise the clicking and turning of the gears in her mind. But he wasn't a telepath; only she knew what was truth and what was fiction. No matter his choice, he was taking a dangerous gamble.

Frankly, he'd rather just pay the bill. It was the right thing to do—every instinct screamed at him to settle and get out of here as fast as he could pack his bags. He could always claim that money back in his lawsuit. The very thought of owing this woman, of letting himself get caught in her strings by debt and secrets… it made his skin crawl. But she was right, wasn't she? He knew the statistics—people disappeared in Holyhead, more than anywhere else.

Unless he wanted to join them, he was going to need her help.

"Those terms aren't very clear. Does that only count what I did to Foxy, or does it include any future mayhem that may or may not involve me? And what if someone else starts spreading rumours and I get blamed for it? And—"

"Take it or leave it, Mr. Fletcher."

His fingers dug into the knees of his jeans. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

"No, you don't." She clicked through the feed with those polished talons, lips pursed. Ash didn't want to think about what she was looking for. "Do you know what's especially interesting about you?"

"Why don't you just tell me instead of making me guess?"

"I hear that your father was charged for a series of murders sixteen years ago. It's strange, then, that you came back just to work _here._ It's almost as if you're… up to something."

 _Plink._ The mug shattered in Carver's fingers. Shards of porcelain flashed in all directions, spraying the wood, the files, the notes, with dark, foul-smelling liquid. With a yelp she snatched back her hand, bleeding cuts raked into the knuckles, and went to lift her laptop out of the path of destruction pooling like volcanic mud across the desk. Wide, startled eyes rose to meet his own.

He blinked, swaying on chafed, blistered feet. He didn't remember standing. He didn't remember slamming his fist onto the desk. It trembled as he lifted it from the wood and watched it uncurl—nothing he could do would stop the shaking. She watched as he snatched his bag from the floor and dashed from the room.


	10. Chapter Nine: Dog Days

**A/N:** New chapter, new viewpoint character! I thought you might find it interesting to have a little tidbit of what makes Eric tick. I hope you like it!

* * *

 **CHAPTER NINE**

DOG DAYS

* * *

"I know what you're thinking, and yes, this is all my fault."

Louise turned her back on him with a derisive snort, busying herself rummaging in the shelves for the tools to reattach Freddy's missing digits. "When ain't it?"

That struck like a javelin, straight through the heart. But it was the truth, wasn't it? It hurt, yes, and it was all he deserved. Eric reached up to run worn fingers through his hair again, only to remember that he had already done that a dozen times this morning—and it showed. It simply wouldn't do to look _too_ stressed around the day staff. They already suspected the worst. With some difficulty, he changed the motion to adjusting his glasses and frowned. "I didn't… mean for this to happen."

"It was going to whether you meant it or not. You never learn." Selecting a hefty wrench, she gave it a few test swings. The ripple of her biceps brought to life the stories etched bright into her skin—hummingbirds, phoenixes, tigers and there, on her hands, those soft pink roses, the one story she would not tell.

That was his fault, too. He stole her hands from her, and she would never get them back.

"You know I don't like having to do this."

"And yet, you do." Something crashed to the floor and she swore in French—he caught his name somewhere between the words. Throwing down her rag with far more force than necessary, she knelt down and fished for it under the shelving. "What the fuck is the point in even hiring them? They come, they leave—or they die. Waste of fucking money and life. And _you._ You let it happen."

It took him a moment to realise what he was looking at. Flushing, he tore his eyes from her rear end and focused them pointedly on the floor. There was an irregular patch on the boards scuffed free of dust. He made a fuss of studying this oddity as he cleared his throat and answered, "We can't go without a night guard, Louise."

"Bullshit. We got the best guard dogs in town."

"That's exactly why we need one. It's not to protect the pizzeria, or… or the damn animatronics. It's to protect people from _them."_

"So the cost of a few guards is worth saving the skins of all the thieving little shits and wannabe ghost hunters who'd break in here without one?"

"You do the math."

"People ain't numbers!" She snapped, straightening up. Her grip tightened around the wrench. "It don't matter how you rationalise it, someone dies either way and one death is too damn many." The lines around her eyes, her mouth, deepened, and with bitterness and regret on her lips she turned away once more, tossing it onto the benchtop.

He winced at the clash of steel on steel—and swore, for a moment, that Foxy twitched too. But that was impossible; Ash destroyed his power unit. Without power he was just an expensive paperweight. Yet something within that black, gaping socket watched him, something that made the air on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. He couldn't hold its gaze. Dropping his eyes once more to that shape Ash marked out on the floorboards—why did it seem so familiar?—his mouth twisted into a grimace. "I know."

She sniffed and swiped furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Why are you here?"

"Last night… did he tell you what happened?"

"He said something vague about 'not being himself'."

"I thought he'd been too quiet for too long and went to check on him." Restless now, his feet traced out a path on the floor. The dust muffled the thump of his work shoes. Without another sound to disguise it, the click and grind of his bad knee had him gritting his teeth. A constant reminder of his failings that would be with him for the rest of his life. "He wasn't there."

"What?"

"I found him on the stage. Right in front of Freddy." Brow furrowed, he reached out with one hand to mimic the pose he found him in. "Just… standing there, completely still. I had to drag him away myself. And when I looked him in the eye… it wasn't him looking back at me." Snatching back his hand, he looked at it for a moment, watched the fingers curl into a fist. "You're right—I should never have let him come here. It's been sixteen years, I thought, maybe, things would've changed. I let my emotions cloud my judgement and now it's too late. Carver has her claws in him now."

Louise leaned back on the shelves, arms crossed, her eyes on that crude pictogram marked out onto the floor. He followed her gaze and found himself at its feet. Up, his eyes wandered, up, up, to that snarling maw full of teeth, those staring eyes, the tall, curved ears like blades.

Yes, it had been almost a decade. But that image was still burned into his memory, and would be until the end of time.

Garou.

Ash would never have seen the suit in this raw, skeletal state as a child. He only ever knew the golden fur, the muzzle stretched wide with a plastic smile, and the soft paws made for dancing. He didn't sketch this out from his memory.

A chill slid over his skin, an ice-cold razor's edge. And that darkness, that empty void, in Foxy's eyes, it stared into his own, alive—malevolent. Fangs glinted in the half-light.

" _You took him away from me."_

He stepped back towards the door.

"You can do something!" Louise said, oblivious to the presence in the room with them. There was desperation in her eyes. "You can _stop_ this! You've got more dirt on this place than anyone else, from right when the whole damn thing started. If any of that got out, they'd shut the pizzeria down by the end of the week."

He let his eyes fall closed. What he would give for a good coffee right now—but there was still so much left to be done. "I can't."

"Don't give me that shit. Why not?"

"There are some things that should stay buried for good. Besides," his mouth turned down at the corners, "it won't stop anything. Just one more abandoned building for people to break into and die, just like the diner. At least this way we can... reduce the collateral."

Her lips drew back to display clenched white teeth. "You're _disgusting."_

"I'm realistic."

"You used to care." She turned her back on him, reaching for the handle on one of the clamps mounted to the workbench. Jamming in one of the severed fingers, hard enough to scuff the felt, she bent over it and picked at the wires with a scowl and a pair of tweezers. "But that man died a long time ago. Don't let the same happen to Ash, y'hear?"

"Or you'll what, kill me?"

"I won't. But _he_ will."

"I wouldn't blame him." He paused in the doorframe, nails digging into the flaking paint. Of course. If Ash 'disappeared', then he himself would join him, two more bodies scratched into the tally on a safe room wall. He had already accepted that fate. Mike never was one to let go of a grudge.

Funny… he never did hear back from those two social workers. He wondered what part of the swamp they were buried in. "—But I would call him a hypocrite."

Louise glanced back at him, her gaze questioning, but she would find nothing in his own. He wore his mask too well.

He wished, someday, that he could take it off.

"Do you know why Ash is here? If… I never called him, he might not have gotten it into his head to come back here. Typical isn't it? Whenever I try to make things right…" his eyes hardened, "I only make them worse."

"You don't say?"

"I… I'll keep a closer eye on him, I promise."

"Your promises don't mean a thing."

Freddy. Bonnie. Chica. They all watched him as he made his way back across the stage. Louise had removed all of their batteries, yet those eyes followed his every movement.

Every day, it was harder and harder to tell what was real and what wasn't, what was just a memory reaching out to replay in front of his eyes. Every day, life looked just a little more like a play of shadow puppets he'd seen a thousand times before. Nothing changed.

And the bear never left him.

It cast no shadow as it sat slumped at the top of the stairs, its half-hinged jaw gaping open, lopsided, as if in a mocking leer. It had no eyes to watch with, but watch him it did, its stare accusing.

" _You can still change things. There is always hope."_

"No," he said bitterly, "there isn't." And he walked straight through it. It was just a ghost he created for himself—that suit was rotting in the bowels of the earth.

* * *

 _1996_

"ERIC!"

"Jesus!" His breakfast went soaring in all directions as he windmilled backwards into the door, away from this unwelcome surprise swinging impishly from the ceiling. With a squeak his heel caught on a stray crumpet and sent him onto his rump. Somehow, he had the strangest feeling he knew why Fredrickson ripped out the carpet backstage. "D—darn it Gael, you know he hates it when you do that!"

He smiled innocently, upside down of course, fluttering those baby blues. "Do what? I'm just going through my exercises."

"You have bars for that. Stop hanging from the light fixtures—and butter more crumpets while you're at it, since it's your fault they're on the floor." Eric grimaced as he eased himself back onto his feet, brushing the dust from his pants with an expert flick of his fingers. It wasn't the first time he wound up on the floor, and won't be the last; whether he was climbing around like a monkey or scooping his colleagues up for dramatic reenactments of Swan Lake, Gael had more than enough energy for the three of them on his own. Maybe foam padding would be a better idea than carpet. Yet, in spite of himself, he felt his lips curling into a smile.

Gael grinned. "You're cute when you're mad."

"Save it for someone who cares, Casanova."

Reaching up, he flipped over and with an expert twist of his torso he dropped onto his feet. "Do you think Mike will come over to see what you were screaming about? I mean… it was pretty high-pitched."

Eric huffed, straightening his shirt. "It was not—what, so you can do the same thing to him? Do you _want_ to be hospitalised?"

The door clicked open again. At once Gael turned, his features lighting up as if from within—Eric wrinkled his nose in mock disgust at the sparkle in his eyes. In a way, he was… a little jealous. He wished someone would look at _him_ like that.

And Mike, of course, was completely oblivious.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the broody security guard putting in an appearance today. Gael's face fell as Jake staggered in, stifling a yawn. "Oh. It's you."

"Don't sound too excited," he grunted, combing his fingers through bright blonde curls. He planted a foot squarely on one of the fallen crumpets and his face scrunched. "Ugh—what's all this?"

"Gael decided to practice his aerobic kissing routine on me," said Eric, shaking coffee off his shoe.

"From the lights again?"

"No, from the jungle gym we just had installed—of course from the lights."

"And what, pray tell, is the occasion?"

Deadpan, he made an 'O' with one hand and stuck a finger in it with the other. "Do I have to go through the birds and the bees with you?"

"That's not what I'm asking, ye of the bladed tongue."

"All right, that's a new one."

"The occasion? Why, only the most important thing to happen all year," Gael declared, now sitting on the top shelf of their kitchenette with a box of Lucky Charms. How he scaled the walls with such speed and silence remained a mystery. He let the statement hang—for dramatic tension, of course—as he picked all of the marshmallows from the box, then, once he was finally satisfied that only cereal remained, he added, "do you know what arrived this morning?"

"Me?" Jake offered, quirking a brow. "Through some miracle. And you're not improving my hangover in the slightest."

"Close, but no." He flicked a piece of oatmeal from his high vantage point and landed a bullseye right in the middle of his forehead, grinning when he scowled and reached up to scrub the sugar from the impact zone. The rattle and rumble of a truck pulling up outside drew his gaze to the one small window mounted on the west wall. "They're here!"

" _What's_ here?"

But Gael didn't answer—instead, he leapt from the shelf and scrambled to press his face against the glass. Morning sunlight filtered through, glittering in his eyes, the periwinkle blue of a cloudless winter morning, and on the smile that split his features.

Eric had to admit… his excitement was infectious. "Hey, budge up! Let me look!"

He obliged—but not without a playful wiggle of his hips. "Just for you, pumpkin."

"Oh, please."

He squished in alongside him so that he, too, could observe the workers unload the crates from the truck. And they were huge—seven feet tall apiece, at least, made of nailed wooden planks with 'FRAGILE' stencilled on the front. He watched as men with biceps thicker than his waist loaded them, grunting, onto sack barrows and wheeled them up the ramp below, and the pieces clicked into place. "Are those… new suits?"

"Mike said that these ones are going to be different."

"How so?"

"I don't know. I don't think he does, either. He only hears this stuff because he brings Sera here almost every day." Gael bit his lip. "I think the boss wanted it to be a surprise."

Eric squawked at a hand on his head, pushing him down and out of Jake's line of sight. He ducked out of view of the window with a frown, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses on his nose in an attempt to restore some of his dignity. "You could have asked."

"I prefer the direct method," he drawled, leaning his bared elbows on the sill to observe the proceedings for himself. His cold, grey eyes glittered hungrily as the last crate was hauled inside the building.

"Come on!"

Glancing back, Eric saw that Gael was already jumping over the crushed remains of his breakfast and yanking open the backstage door. "Can't it wait? I'm still hungry—hey!"

"Last one there has to suit up everyone else!" And with a whisk of his mousy brown ponytail, he was gone.

"I get enough exercise doing the shows, running after you is the last thing I need!" But he followed anyway, driven onwards by burning curiosity. What was so special about these new costumes for Fredrickson to make such a song and dance of keeping them secret? For the performers who would be wearing them, at least. Because if Mike knew just from hanging around the customers and wait staff, it was hardly to keep the shady types Percy's Pizza staked out by the doors from catching on—that place would have an identical costume within a week.

Turn right, down the hall, and through the maintenance door into the maze of corridors that made up the staff portion of the diner. Down the ramp to the stockroom, he caught sight of Gael wriggling like a fish through the crowd of workers and day staff who had already gathered, oohing and aahing, around the three mysterious crates set up in the centre of the room, shafts of golden sunshine falling upon them like rays from heaven. Did he stumble onto a movie set?

"There you are!" Fredrickson boomed, grey moustache bristling into a smile as he clapped wide palms to his beer belly. "We were hoping to gift wrap them and sneak them backstage while you weren't looking… but I suppose this is surprise enough."

Gael made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a squeal, like a toy being trodden on. He plastered himself to the side of one of the boxes, pressing an eye to a knot in the wood in the hopes of catching an early glimpse. "Which one's Garou? Man—I can't wait until Ashley sees him!"

With a wink and a flip of his crowbar—fumbling it and dropping it on his toe in the process—Fredrickson went to the crate on the left and pried off the front. Packing peanuts spilled out in an avalanche onto the floor.

They crunched under Eric's shoes as he picked his way through the throng, closer and closer to the figure framed inside. It drew his gaze and held it, like something out of myth, a titan. A golden wolf with a lazy smile stretched across its snout, ears pricked and red eyes half-lidded and glassy. It stood on its own two feet without any supports, without any straps holding it in place, and metal gleamed in the joints of its neck and wrists.

This wasn't just a costume.

"This… this is an animatronic." His brows furrowed, creasing his thin features into a frown. "Are you _replacing_ us?"

"I understand your concern, but no," said Fredrickson, reaching up to clap him on the shoulder. "These are special hybrid suits that you can use both as costumes and as stand-alone animatronics. The idea is that we can set them up to tell jokes and banter a bit while you three are on break or learning new routines; that way we can cut down on the amount of time the stage stays empty and no one misses a show! It's brilliant!"

"But—"

"You're only human, Eric. You can't perform like that all day. This way you can all take longer breaks and don't have to rush to get back on stage."

He… had a point. The idea in of itself was remarkable—Gael would be staying up all night poking at all the inner mechanisms that made them tick. But something made him uneasy, something he couldn't put his finger on. His eyes strayed back to those dull red optics gazing lifelessly over the crowd—and yet, it felt like it was watching him. Biting his lip, he said, "why not just get standard animatronics and wheel those out during downtime, and keep the old suits for the shows? Wouldn't it be cheaper?"

But no one was listening. He watched as the lids came off of Freddy and Bonnie's crates in a cascade of plastic and styrofoam, watched as they were loaded back onto sack barrows and taken backstage. As Freddy wheeled past him, that great head lolled around on slack shoulders to look at him as it passed.


	11. Chapter Ten: Ashes to Ashes

**A/N:** Back to Ash again for this chapter! And another face no one is happy to see again. I hope you like it! Let me know what you think :)

* * *

 **CHAPTER 10**

ASHES TO ASHES

* * *

Nothing. That was all that remained when Ash opened his eyes—nothing but stark, blue-white conflagration. Unbearable, overwhelming, a burning starfire that left him bare and exposed. He was an ant under a magnifying glass. At any moment, the titan above could choose to end his insignificance with the stamp and twist of a heel. But, for now, it seemed content to watch him burn.

Shadows striped the sand, the soot left behind by things that once were. No, not sand… pearl-coloured ashes, still warm under his knees, the palms of his hands. Raising a fist, he watched it sieve through his fingers. Why was he kneeling? He squinted into the glare, picking out shapes around him, black on white. Trees, he realised as his vision adjusted, twisted and charred, skeleton fingers reaching in despair to a burning sky. They glistened, their bark withered into glass. Something chimed in a breeze that did not exist.

"Need a hand?"

The tears hissed and evaporated on his cheeks as he looked up into a shadowed face. He recognised the hooked nose, the white flash of glasses. "Eric?"

"Here."

Sniffing, he reached up to take his hand—and it sizzled under his grip. Terror stilled the heart in his chest. What… what was this? Why was he burning him? He didn't want to hurt anyone. And then he saw them, the shadows, they arced away from _him._ He wasn't caught under a blazing sun—it was he who was on fire.

It was he who was the monster.

"I tried to fix things," Eric murmured, his features twisting in pain as he pulled him onto his feet, as his skin withered away. But he wouldn't let go. "I tried to make things right again. And I failed."

"No, please!"

"But… I'm glad I got to see you again."

Ash hated the way he smiled as he crumbled away.

* * *

The sparrows nesting on his balcony took to the air in fright at the scream that tore from his throat. Scrambling into a sitting position, he blinked as the room spun around him, as it dawned on him that it was, in the end, just a dream. He never set the world on fire. Trembling fingers dug into the sheets, looking for comfort and reassurance. This was reality. There was no burning. There was no piercing, unnatural light.

But he'd never seen anything like it before in his life. He tried to convince himself that it wasn't a vision of things to come, but knew the words were lies.

His cheeks were wet and sticky. Reaching up, he felt tears under his fingertips. And, shoulders and chest heaving, his breath caught like glass in his throat, he let them fall. He curled in on himself as if he could shut out the world, as if he could hold together his own broken pieces, and buried his face in his knees, wound his hands into his hair. His heart fluttered at his ribs, a caged bird calling out in answer to another song.

It whispered to him, plucking out the melody he shared with only one person, a person gone from his life forever. Shadow fingers made of music and memory brushed softly against his face, touching the tears caught there. He wished he could be here right now. It… almost felt like him as it surrounded him, as it filled the room with its chiming.

Almost.

He stretched out flat on his stomach to rummage under the bed, withdrawing the battered old cookie tin he kept there. It had been too long since he dared to look inside—the lid took force to prise free. Bundles of photos, bad reprints from blurry Facebook pictures sent to him by friends and cousins. The odd trinket that survived his exodus from Holyhead sixteen years ago: a model of Endeavour, painted in its black and white NASA livery by small, unsteady hands, a handful of beach glass, some drawings of animatronic characters he recognised, but looked very different to their modern counterparts. And the music box.

It was simple in shape, a flat box about the size of his hand that felt warm to the touch. The filigree wrought into its surface was anything but. Fantastic scenes of myth and legend leapt to life in coiled vines and branches, in birds and clouds and bright, pointed stars beneath his fingers. And, somehow, the lid was open to display the mirror inside as it played that dark, solemn melody.

Dad… never told him what it was, what it meant, only that it was 'their' song. Now he would never get the chance to ask.

He didn't have the heart to close it. He didn't have the strength to face the silence. So he held it close to his chest as he picked himself onto unsteady feet and padded to the balcony. Beady eyes peeked at him in concern from under the deck chair, from between the empty pots and the fragrant blooms of wisteria. Opening the door, he let them come to him and huddle together on his arms and shoulders, glad for their company and the warmth of their feathers.

From the position of the sun in the sky, it was near noon. If he changed quickly, he would have time to catch the market before it closed. He knew what he had to do.

* * *

Straker was waiting for him.

Frightened words died on Ash's lips. Leaving the sparrows safely in the arms of the statue of Arthur Rambley, he took one step closer, then another, and another. The cards were already set out on the table, ringed with fresh candles. Even as the wind snatched and tugged at them, they would not stir.

He smiled at his approach. It still unsettled him, that lazy curve of the lips that never warmed his gaze.

But this was something he had to do. No one else could help him. No one else would know how to stop the dreams, the visions, to keep that darkness from creeping inside. If it unleashed what he concealed there…

He inclined his head in greeting. Slouching in his chair, he sat with arms folded, blazer unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up as before; it was strange that he thought his scars beautiful. He said nothing, only watched and waited as Ash reached out tentative fingers to take the card at the heart of the arrangement and turn it over.

Ten of swords.

"Did you think you can change your destiny?" He said, his voice low. "It's written in the stars—in your bones."

Ash opened his mouth to tell him that he didn't believe in destiny—but he knew that wasn't true. He knew the moment he set eyes on Freddy Fazbear's Pizza that it wasn't a series of coincidences that brought him here.

Something called him back.

And still he waited. Biting his lip, now, Ash flipped another card, revealing one labelled 'wheel of fortune', and glanced up at him for affirmation.

"And fate marches on." His lips curled as he gathered up the cards and shuffled them. "To rise, we must fall. That's why you're here, is it not?"

Ash said nothing. Those eyes bored into him, cold grey drills, breaking him down and picking over the pieces. Looking for diamonds amongst the stones, he realised. It was _unpleasant,_ that rawness, that naked vulnerability as he was strip-mined of every fleeting thought, of memories he'd rather stay buried. Was this how his presence, his gaze, felt to others? His stomach twisted. But this man was nothing like him—he tore apart his boundaries with surgical precision, unmoved by his discomfort, his fear.

He was stronger. Dropping his eyes in shame, Ash let the bitter truth drag down the corners of his lips. "I… need your help."

"And what could possibly ail you, that you come to a demonologist for help?"

"That's… an interesting job title you've got there."

"Such skepticism is unhealthy for one such as you. Your new family in New York might not believe in demons…" That smile broadened when he saw him flinch—his teeth were strikingly white. So out of place beside his other features: his face, once handsome, carved out with hollow, hungry cheeks, his eyes deep-set in bruised sockets. "But _here_ they dwell, whether you believe in them or not." He paused in his shuffling to consider the white ridges scratched into the back of his hand. "Do you?"

He still remembered the drum-beat staccato of Donovan's pulse under his fingertips, the way his eyes bulged, gaping up at the thing he had become. If he squeezed a little harder… a dark little voice had whispered to him, telling him that the torment would end, that no one would dare to touch him again. And he remembered _wanting to._ "Yeah," he murmured, curling his arms against his chest. The weight of the music box in the inner pocket of his jacket was comforting, "I do."

Straker surveyed him, the gears of his mind hidden and silent behind his impassable wall, his neutral mask. "Have a seat, let us do business."

The chair creaked beneath Ash's bony rear; it wasn't very comfortable. "I can pay you."

"I have no need for earthly wealth."

"Then what _do_ you want?"

"I want to see your story unfold." His expression did not change as he replaced the animal cards back inside their box—sandalwood, from the heady scent—and bent to retrieve another, battered package of simple cardboard from the shelves built into the back of his stall. "But you don't like the feeling of being in debt, do you? To feel like some part of you is the property of another."

Ash shifted uneasily. How did he know these things? It was with grudging admiration that he recognised his status here—he was the pupil, Straker the master. His control over his perception so far outstripped his own that he couldn't even begin to guess what else he learned from their brief moment of eye contact. He came to the right person.

"In fact, I might have a use for you. I need a more… _attuned_ pair of eyes while in the field, looking for more to add to my collection." Extracting this other set of cards from their box, pausing for a moment to consider their bent, frayed edges, he crooked a brow at his new student. "Would you consider that an equivalent exchange?"

Ash couldn't understand how it would benefit him to bring him hunting for haunted skulls and cursed beads and who knows what else; the awful things made him squirm inside his skin. Wouldn't he just get in the way? Well, if that was all he asked in payment, he could deal with it. His wallet thanked him. "I… guess so."

"Excellent, then it's settled. Shall we shake on it?"

He eyed his extended hand, the memory of what happened last time still fresh in his mind. "I'll pass. I'm sure my word is good enough."

"Words are powerful." Straker didn't elaborate on his meaning, simply humming to himself as he shuffled the replacement pack of tarot cards. The tune seemed familiar. "Since I can see that you want to ask, we're using the Rider-Waite deck for this next exercise."

"Why's that?"

"Different symbolism, easier for a less experienced mind to interpret and project onto. Now, when you see this card, what's your first thought?"

The card he held out to him was faded and a stark white crease sliced across its illustration, but he could pick out the important details and the name inscribed on the bottom: the tower. Lightning arced from the sky to strike the titular building, dislodging a crown and two unfortunate souls, who looked on in terror as they plunged from its windows. "Um… jumping from buildings is a really bad idea?"

Straker's pale lips curved upwards. "Well, you _are_ correct, but perhaps you're taking it too literally?"

Printed, screaming eyes stared up at him as he turned it around in his hands. Its frayed edges scratched under the pads of his thumbs. "It… looks like they're trying to escape from a bad situation, but made the wrong choice." His frown deepened. "And now they're facing something much worse."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"A little uneasy."

With a playful tilt of his head, lank blonde hair falling loose into his face, the smirk split once more to reveal the glitter of teeth. "Now how could that be? Is it possible that it reflects on something that happened to you recently, or something you spend much of your time thinking about?"

Turning in his seat, Ash shot cautious glances at other merchants, at other customers, as they grimaced into the wind. He had difficulty enough hearing Straker over the howls and tantrums of a zephyr deprived of toys, and he sat just a touch too close for comfort. No one could eavesdrop. "I… assume you know about the pizzeria."

"I know everything that happens in Holyhead"

"Then you know what happened last night?"

"I do now."

Oops. Ash flushed, spluttering, "what's the point of this?"

"This isn't cartomancy. And I'm not here to judge you or make a fool of you. This is a simple visual aid to help you address any thoughts or concerns that might be troubling you. A meditative exercise, if you will."

"I—I understand."

"Why do you feel that you made the wrong choice, Ashley?"

He flinched at the sound of his own name. His skin prickled where that cold gaze lingered, searching for an unspoken answer, but he refused to meet it. Instead, he looked out across the cobbled square, over the heads of the last, straggling shoppers and the flocks of pigeons that pecked contentedly about their feet, to the jewellery stall on the waterfront. She was there again, watching him with lips pressed into a thin line. Concern. Unease. He remained silent—it wasn't something he wanted to talk about, not yet.

"Ah. You don't trust me." Straker took back the tower card and shuffled it into its parent deck with long, deft fingers. "Very well. A topic for another time, then?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Again." He slid another card to him across the table: a man braced atop a green rise with a wooden staff in hand, brandished against other branches jutting from the bottom frame of the image. Seven of wands, said the title at the bottom.

Ash took it, biting his lip. This one was easier on the eyes, less menacing to behold, but… that undercurrent, that threat was still there, wasn't it? He wouldn't have been terribly surprised if every card was some omen of ill fortune. "It looks like he's fighting off someone, a group," he said, slowly, "like he's outnumbered and backed into a corner and has nowhere else to run."

"Do you ever feel like that?"

Setting it back down, he let a sigh escape from between his teeth. "That's life, isn't it?"

Straker's eyebrows rose, disappearing into his unkempt fringe. "Is it?"

"I was always bullied. Always looked down on, expected to prove myself, live up to other people's expectations. And they would just… poke and poke at me to see if I would break. To make sure I knew my place." He was surprised at how easily the words came. Hot, angry, boiling over from that fiery cauldron inside that he kept lidded and sealed away. They burned at his lips, a bitter broth. "I thought… things would be different if I came here. I was wrong. Just for different reasons."

"True strength comes from suffering. Nothing else." Straker put the old tarot deck back in its box, his expression impossible to read, and handed it to him. "Keep this and do that exercise every day. You hold a great anger within that you can no longer ignore. Think over your experiences and address how you feel about them; an untroubled mind is one much easier to defend."

It was heavier than he expected, a warm weight in his palm. Memories lingered upon it, a thousand touches of a hand, worry, anticipation, regret. This was something very important to him. "I… thank you. I'll look after it."

"Le plaisir est pour moi. Now, what was it you specifically wanted to see me about?"

"I…" Ash hesitated. Now was no time for second thoughts, but… he didn't like this, confiding something so dark and so personal in a complete stranger. But Straker gave him something of his that was personal and it felt wrong, now, not to do the same in return. Equivalent exchange. And, as much as he hated to admit it, he needed help. "I've been having these dreams. Too vivid, too real to be anything normal. And when I wake up…" He rolled up his sleeve to display the marks and bruises on his arm.

"Interesting," Straker drawled, leaning over to press fingers lightly to the wounds. "These are just from the dreams, no other source?"

"Yeah."

"What have you been dreaming about that does this to you?"

"It's different every time. But it has the same voice." His lips twisted. "It always sounds like dad."

"But it's always a dream?"

"I… No. I've seen it in the pizzeria too. A shadow there. It… that place gets inside my head, makes me do things without me even realising."

"Ah, very interesting indeed. I suppose you've considered, then, that these aren't truly dreams at all? But of course, that's why you're here." Straker turned back to his shelves, rubbing at the thin, fair stubble that was starting to creep up on his jawline. "You're afraid of the power it has over you. You're afraid of you might do under its influence."

"I want to keep it out," Ash murmured, "like you can."

"Training your mind and spirit takes considerable time and effort, I hope you're prepared for that."

"Whatever it takes."

His lips quirked. "That's what I like to hear. These," he pressed a candle and a small bag of lavender into his hands, "will help. They won't stop it, but they'll help. Light the candle and use the cards before you go to sleep and keep a little lavender under your pillow."

"Um, how do they help exactly?"

"By keeping you calm and your mind clear, these manifestations feed on negative emotion. And, if you can, keep a light with you. It's stronger in the dark."

A chill ran down his spine. How did he know that?

"Write down everything you experience as soon as possible and bring it to me—consider it your homework. It's Halloween this Saturday. They'll be holding the annual burning of the rabbit, a local harvest festival and unabashedly pagan—the folk up on the hill despise it." His eyes flickered to the bright wooden cladding of the church nestled on the crest where the sun set each evening, a flash of white between the willows. "Meet me there for your next lesson."

"Thank you for doing this for me. I was seriously considering leaving."

"That would be a crying shame. There aren't nearly enough interesting people in this town. And Mr. Fletcher?"

Ash paused midway through stowing what he was given safely inside his bag. "Yes?"

"Next time you ask me for help..." Teeth flashed as a smile curved across those thin, pale lips. "Tell me the whole truth."


	12. Chapter Eleven: Sins of the Father

**A/N:** At last a new chapter, three months later! First of all, I'd like to apologise that this is so late. I've been struggling with an awful case of writer's block and had to rewrite this chapter no less than three times. Hopefully, from now on, new updates will come much more quickly. I'm going to try and aim for once a week but can't make any promises.

If you enjoy the chapter (or not,) I'd love to hear what you think!

* * *

 **CHAPTER ELEVEN**

SINS OF THE FATHER

* * *

The weight of silence. That was all he knew, pressing down on him, filling his lungs. Maybe he fell under the ice. Maybe he was drowning.

There was no sound but the whistle of wind in his ears as he bent into the storm, the thunder of waves at the breakwater, raking claws along the concrete to drag loose stones into their maws. Flags waved without rustling, barbecues fried without sizzling. A small girl took her burger with a mouthed 'thanks,' met his eyes, then fled between the gazebos with meal clutched firmly to her chest, as though he would rip it from her hands.

Ash couldn't hear them—but he could see their lips move. He could see his name spelled out on the shape of their mouths as he passed. His skin prickled under the daggers of their eyes. Some were crafty, flashing glances over their wares like poisoned darts. Others stared openly and without shame. Unnerved tourists looked first to one another, caught in the crossfire between stalls, then they, too, turned their gaze on him.

There was nowhere to run.

The fog creeping in from the sea clung, damp and sticky, to the hems of tents and tablecloths, pressing in closer and closer around him with every step. Life and colour rotted away wherever it touched. A labyrinth of glittering things and trick walls, a trap laid out with imagined shadows.

At least, he _hoped_ the figure disappearing into the bank of fog was just his imagination.

The matronly woman who sold balloons and trinkets and sweet treats to children watched him coming, her smile firmly affixed, just for them. And _only_ for them. It slipped from her face the moment they escaped with their goods into the grey. Bushy eyebrows knitted into an expression that was ugly in more ways than one when her lips wrote out his name.

 _Ashley Fletcher_.

The mist brushed against his skin when he slid his money across the table with a quick gesture at the flashiest helium balloon on offer. He repressed a shudder at its touch, the way it wrapped around his wrist and tugged, the clammy fingers of forgotten ghosts, and tried not to think of all the guards who came before him.

She took the cash, kept the change, and thrust the balloon in his face. More words tumbled from her mouth. Even as the wind snatched them away he could feel them lashing out at him, raking angry lines into his skin.

He knew when he wasn't welcome.

So he went. Children scattered before him like a balloon-wielding boogieman as he retraced his steps through the maze. It was his only company, bobbing merrily on its string beside him, but the flash of silver in the wind couldn't lift his spirits. Nothing looked familiar… this was where he walked just minutes before, right? But there was no answer; the walls fluttered in silence around him. Where did everyone go?

Why did he even come down here? Was it to see _her_ again? He'd be lucky to find his way home in this weather, let alone her stall.

The scent of honey oatcakes wafted from somewhere deep in the fog, a siren's call he couldn't resist. Following his nose to the source, to a twitchy man with a twitchy moustache who wouldn't meet his eyes, he bought two and took his leave. Lured out by the promise of food, a female sparrow wormed from under his hood and blinked sleepy eyes. Even as he walked away he saw the man recoil, making a face and the sign of the cross, both, and spit where he once stood.

Ash's lips twisted. Let him guess; the devil kept sparrows, too?

Unfortunately, the diversion wasn't one of his better ideas. By the time his weary feet found the path through once more—maybe?—the cakes had long since turned cold, and gazebos disappeared one by one from the rows. Vague shapes shifted in the gaps. He knew they were just vendors packing up for the day, loading tents and trestle tables back into their cars, but his mind still wanted to paint pictures of lurking monsters. Of dull plastic eyes and teeth wearing false smiles. Two days ago that image would never have sent a shiver crawling down his spine.

Arms lunged at him from the mist. He couldn't hear the cry wrenched from his lips, but he felt the impact when he stumbled backwards into something, _someone,_ very solid. She glared up at him from scattered handmade soaps with loathing in the lines of her face—and was that fear? Too much white showed around the ring of her irises. When he went to help her with stuttered, silent apologies, she was swift to push him away and pick up her wares alone.

Alone. Of course.

He turned away in shame. The arms were bronze and frozen where he found them—just Sir Rambley gazing with sightless eyes into the ocean for all eternity. Market square.

And if he was here, maybe she was too.

Grey pressed in on all sides—the open space looked no different to the narrow alleyways that fought to trap and keep him. It made for a blank canvas on which to paint his memory of the square. The statue did face the sea, he was certain. Or was it the hill? He tried to picture her there, plying her wares in the same spot, the same worn expression on her face. But without a sense of direction, of space, his reconstruction was flimsy and melted away into the fog faster than he could build it. Staggering after the ghost of her after-image in the mist, he met only damp, empty air, tripping over his own heart as it dropped like a stone to catch at his feet.

He was being ridiculous. The unseen eyes he felt burning into him all over his skin were just imagined foes, conjured from baseless hatred and hostility. His fingers dug into the claw marks left on his skin, hidden under the sleeves of his jacket. None of it was real.

But the wall was. He couldn't stop the yelp when his chest hit the concrete, couldn't hear it, but he could feel the rush of breath knocked from his lungs. His hands lashed out but there was no one to push away, only cold, wet concrete, rough under his fingertips. The breakwater, the only barrier between him and the hungry sea.

The tide was in. Below him, the waves tossed and turned with foaming mouths. There was something in the air, something more than spray and ozone, something in the sea itself, like an anchor dragging him down. Restless. Angry. It stared up at him, called out his name. It would have its tithe—or it would have _him._ Holding out the balloon, he watched it bounce and tug at his hand as the gusts snatched eagerly for its string.

Then he let go.

Up it soared, up into a mottled grey sky, twisting and twirling and leaping joyous cartwheels in its ascent. Though the silver of its tassels soon vanished from sight, the wind, the deafening silence, went with it.

The waves stumbled over their own trampling feet and fell, crashing down well short of their mark in a thrashing and a spray of spittle. His skin stung where it lashed at him. But he stood his ground, unmoved by their tantrums, the gnashing of their teeth, and watched them heave sluggishly onto the rocks one last time before slinking away. He watched the banners, the pennants, flutter and fall still. And in the distance, the shapes of yachts jumped up and down on the swell before rocking themselves at last to sleep.

He never realised he was holding his breath. Or maybe he wasn't, and it was the silence that was slowly killing him, moment by painful moment. He sucked in a greedy breath that tasted of salt and smoke. Maybe he was selfish for missing the sound of his own voice; it made for poor company, but it was better than no company at all.

It was better than the whispers that took the wind's place.

"Hey!"

Fingers closed around his shoulder. His first instinct was to shrug them away, but he knew that warmth, that tired, scratched voice. "Y—you! I was looking for you!" He blurted before his brain could quite catch up with his words, and regretted it at once. Even the grey couldn't dull the pink flush lighting his cheeks. He didn't even know her name.

Her eyes crinkled, dark, warm, but she didn't smile. "Did you do this? _"_ She asked in a low voice and a nod of her head to still, quiet fog. Without wind to stir it, it settled thick and heavy on the ground. Just her and him and nothing else. Even the voices seemed so far away.

He wished he could understand why her expression, her tone, set him on edge. Did he do something wrong?

"I…" The words tripped and caught on his tongue. How was he supposed to explain this? He couldn't. No one saw things the way he did. But… he couldn't lie to her. "I swear, I just gave it a toy to play with. That's all it wanted. No one here bothers, or takes the time out of their day to just stop and _see_ it—" He swallowed. That somehow sounded less crazy in his head.

Her gaze followed his, casting out a line over the breakwater, across the ruffled sea. He wished that she could see what he saw. And maybe, for just one moment… she did. Maybe she saw the patterns the water traced out on the rocks and sand with its rise and ebb, content now it had played its game and won. Little kisses and thank you notes, for those who could read them. Maybe she saw the way the autumn leaves danced over the cobbles in the breeze, chasing each other round and round until they grew dizzy and tumbled over.

"I… um…" Was it nerves or giddiness that stole the breath from him? "I—I'm Ash."

She avoided his eyes. "I know."

The moment hung there between them, for longer than a moment should. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. The bags under her eyes were darker than he remembered, carved out in black by the gloom, and her fingers dug into his shoulder as if she feared she would lose him if she ever let go.

This wasn't what he pictured. This wasn't what he wanted. And it was his fault, and he didn't even know _why._

His lips pressed into a pale line as he looked down at the polystyrene takeaway box clutched in his fingers. "I got you these, if you wanted to share."

At last the edge of her lips twitched into a thin smile. "Thanks. That's sweet of you. But what were you going to do if we didn't happen to bump into each other?"

"Share them with Merida."

One thin brow arched as she accepted her plastic fork. "Who?"

"My sparrow." Ash shrugged, indicating the ball of feathers nestled in the safety of his hood. "Because she's brave."

"That shouldn't be as funny as it is."

Funny or not, it couldn't lift the weight pressing down on them. They walked together in silence, picking awkwardly at the cakes with forks too blunt to do any real damage to them. Snippets of passing coversations drifted to them over the crunch of their footsteps on the lichen and cobbles, though the ones speaking couldn't be seen.

"—Never seen it change like that in all me years. Came in too fast—it ain't right."

"My boy's out there, how's he gonna make it back in this fog?"

"So," she said, louder, as if to drown out the whispers and the words. She couldn't, but the effort was appreciated. Her smile grew thinner still. "Did you call your mom?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"She was upset," he said as he resorted to using the knife in his multitool to saw the cakes into manageable pieces, pulling a face at the maple syrup that worked its way inside in spite of his best efforts. "Understandably. Especially about my living arrangements. But we reached a compromise."

"Well, she's not wrong there."

Ash stopped. "So… everyone knows where I live, too?"

She bit her lip and looked away. There was guilt in the lines of her face. "Yeah…"

The thought of never being truly safe, not even in his own home, or what passed for one… the very idea sent a shudder crawling like maggots all over his skin. Who else could, _would,_ if that man, Mike, did? He drew a shuddering breath and pushed that notion stubbornly from his mind. He was supposed to be staying calm and in control—that's what Straker said. But he never said it would be easy.

Familiar moth-eaten drapes shifted in the breeze. In their meandering, they had come to a stop once more at his gris-gris stall. Though his collection of bones and chimes still clinked softly together, though the notched sword and the skull remained in pride of place on their stands, red even in the pallor, the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

Ash frowned. "Isn't he worried about people taking things?"

"Really?" A bitter note crept into her laugh. "Who'd steal from _him?"_

"Fair point."

There was an uncomfortable pause, the scrape of plastic on polystyrene the only sound. Her expression darkened once she gave up trying to get the last few syrupy crumbs out of the corners and threw the fork down. "I'm… almost offended that you went to see him first instead of me."

The bottom dropped out of Ash's stomach. God he never even thought of that, and if he went earlier, before the fog rolled in…

The panic must have shown on his face, because she was quick to add, "shit, I'm kidding! Mostly." She looked away again, at the table set out with awful, awful things, and her voice trailed away. "He's like that. Like… a car accident. It repulses you... but you can't help but look." And, heaving a sigh, she tugged across the faded curtain and blocked it all from view.

The voices rose again, louder now—angrier, too. Why were they shouting? Did something happen? Ash jerked away at the sound of them, like sirens in the distance.

" _He did this!"_

"You should go." She wouldn't look at him, even now. Was she afraid of what she'd find written in the blue of his eyes, like all the others? Her hands were rougher than he expected when she took the empty box from him, thick with callouses from working with wire and metal, but warm. Something pressed into his palm—a crumpled piece of paper. A phone number, but more importantly, a name.

Lee. Her name was Lee.

And she was gone. The mist shifted to cover her tracks, all trace of her presence, as though she was never there at all. Just a ghost.

"You!"

The man's voice was hard and scratching, like his beard, his hands, when he lunged from somewhere in the fog. One thick, crooked finger jabbed into Ash's chest with a jolt of pain. His shoes scuffed on the cobbles as he scrambled to back away, but the finger became a fist and balled into his shirt, dragging him off his feet. There was no fighting the corded muscles which stood out under craggy skin.

"Put it right, you little hexer!" He spat, both in his words and at his feet. "My boy's out there!" His face was close, far too close, and there was no escape from him. Not from the unbridled fury of his curses, nor the smell of his breath and his sweat—fish bones and alcohol.

"I—I don't—"

"Didn't you hear me? He'll dash himself on the rocks if he comes into harbour in this. _Get rid of it!"_

"Stop it, l—let me go!"

And he did. Ash stumbled, pulling against a force that was no longer there, and the back of a hand caught him across the cheek and sent him face-first into the ground. The impact knocked the breath from him and he couldn't cry out. Tears stung in his eyes. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run—more figures appeared from behind, from around him. Their boots filled his vision: the twitchy moustache man, the woman he knocked into by accident, the ogress who sold him the balloon, others he never even spoke to. They all looked down on him with disgust in their eyes.

"Don't you dare speak to your elders like that, boy, nor your betters," snarled the old fisherman, "my son is out on them waters, earnin' an honest living like a good son should. And here you think you can work your devilry on us god-fearin' folk. Think you can take him from me." He spat again.

"I swear, I didn't—"

"I saw him with me own eyes!" This time it was the balloon woman who spoke, glee in every word. "Him stole the wind right outta the sails!"

"Should'na expected any different. Bad fathers raise bad sons. Him painted the town red until the river ran with it, then fled with his tail 'tween his legs like the good for nothin' coward he was—"

" _Don't."_

Ash's fingers dug into the filth and moss between the stones. It had been here for longer than he, since before he was born, centuries of accumulated boot mud, shit and gutter water. None of that mattered when it was torn away, gritty under his nails. They would step on him and grind him under their heels until he mattered even less.

But he wouldn't let them drag his father through the mud, too.

"Don't talk about him like that." He was only digging his hole deeper. He knew that, but the words kept coming. Quiet, dangerous, burning at his lips like smoke and ashes. Their fire pushed him first to his knees, then his feet. He swayed on them but didn't buckle. And he would not run. "My dad wasn't a coward!"

Silence fell. He looked at them and they looked at him. No one spoke—no one moved. Then the old man lurched closer, closer, until his pocked, crooked nose pressed up against his. "Your father killed more'n you could count for his devil-work, five kids an' all. One of them was my nephew. And before we could hang the hexer for what he did, he ran." Yellowed eyes creased into slits. "Leavin' his bastard child behind. Good for nothin' deadbeat coward. He did you a favour."

When others saw red, he saw _black._ It ran from the cracks, the gaps, from their eyes and their mouths. Soon it would drown him—soon he would see nothing else. He lunged. Felt skin part under his nails. Warmth, wet and sticky, running down his fingers.

Avenge him, whispered the fire inside and the shadows it cast. Do it. Burn him until there's nothing left.

But thick, powerful arms yanked him back and held him, even as the bellow tore from his throat.

Leather. Kerosene. Steel and cheap aftershave.

 _Him._

Trapped in a metal coffin, no light, no air. Walls pressing in around him. His fasts banging on the metal as he cried out for help, but none came. Mike Schmidt. Ice flooded his veins and froze him in place, even as his heart kicked and struggled between his ribs. He couldn't breathe.

"I'm warnin' you Langley, back off or I'll do worse."

Even his voice sent the terror prickling in goosebumps across Ash's skin, harsh and barking, like a war hound. But the man's gaze was not on him. Instead, he glared across at the reeling victim, hatred sparking in those hard flint eyes.

"He's a curse on us all," the fisherman spat, pressing fingers to the bleeding furrow on his cheek with one hand. With the other, he marked out signs on his chest. "What we get when damned men consort and sleep with demons. Ain't nothin' good'll come of this."

"Ye'll regret flappin' yer lips when I rip 'em off, ye daft pillock."

"What's going on here?"

The voice was crisp and dry, like the rustle of starched linen, and poised with authority. His black uniform marked him as one of the local constabulary and a sullen crowd parted to let him through. When picturing a crooked cop, a vast man clutching a doughnut, even as he reached with greasy fingers for his holster, came to mind—he was anything but. Too small for his uniform, it hung like a sack from his shoulders, and his bleached bone arms were folded neatly in front of him. "Schmidt," he said mildly, "why am I not surprised?"

"It were 'im what started it, guv."

The cop's watery eyes lingered, unflinching, on Schmidt's tall, dark, imposing form, then trailed down to Ash, hanging limply in his arms. There was blood on his fingers. "Unusual for you to be finishing fights instead of starting them."

Schmidt's lips peeled back into a grin, but there was nothing friendly about it. It showed far too many teeth. "I always finish 'em. There's just more'n one way t' do it. And I weren't talkin' 'bout the kid."

Kid. _Kid._ Ash opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again when that gaze continued to bore into him. His hands curled into fists; he didn't like this man.

"Ah, Mr. Fletcher." He tugged a notebook from his chest pocket and scrawled something in it without any change in expression. "Following in daddy's footsteps, I see."

"Leave him out of this," Ash snapped, elbowing his captor in the abdomen and shrugging out of his grip, "and _don't_ touch me!"

The man only 'hmphed' in response. "Sergeant Avery. Consider this a warning—I don't want to see any of you again. Is that clear?"

Langley spat and spluttered until he was red in the face, but his protests fell on deaf ears; Avery had already turned to shoo away the horde of silent, staring onlookers. So he pushed his way through the crowd, through the encroaching fog, and disappeared into the pale. All that remained was the echo of his roar from beyond: "If I have to pick my boy out of the siren's teeth, I'll hang you myself!"

* * *

 **Special thanks to:** Springlockedfoxy


	13. Chapter Twelve: Here be Monsters

**A/N: I didn't get this chapter out quite as fast as I wanted, but it's still an improvement over the three months the last one took. I hope you like it! If you do or don't, I'd love to hear what you think!**

 **In other news, I'm temporarily taking the rating down to T, because in all honesty the story isn't that dark yet and a lot of people are missing it. I'll put it back up to M once it actually earns the rating.**

 **Another thing that I'd like to say is that I'd love for the opportunity to be able to interact with readers, so if you like the story and would like to see what else I get up to, consider following me on social media! I'm active on twitter and tumblr, and if you're interested in supporting me I also have a p atreon and a redbubble store where you can buy prints of my art. I'm Primal Arc on all of them!**

* * *

"Guys, this isn't funny any more."

He stumbled blindly through the fog, clutching his thin flannel close to his chest. It offered no relief against the clinging damp that crept under his skin. Something in it left dread wherever it touched, a weight he couldn't place or shift, like lead in his veins. The weather changed too soon, too fast, faster than anything he'd seen before in his life, and he was caught out and unprepared. He should've listened. He should've packed a coat.

He should've stayed close to the others.

Every rise and ditch, every loose cobble, caught at his feet and sent him staggering, time and time again. It didn't seem to matter how high he lifted his feet, how carefully he set them back down. The mist pressed in so close and so thick that he couldn't see the ground beneath him, and its creeping fingers were treacherous.

"Guys?" His voice rose, thin and reedy, and echoed strangely back to him on the walls closing in. Where did everyone go? Was he even in the Shambles any more? Wide eyes darted here and there, high and low, but there was nothing. No buildings. No shopfronts with bright glass and glittering wares. Nothing but the grey.

 _Snap._

His sneakers crunched on the stones as he spun, heart pounding in his ears. Chapped lips parted, trembling. "H—hello?"

Of course there was no answer. It was just a twig from one of the willow trees, snapping underfoot. But under whose? He didn't like that thought.

 _Crunch._

"Show yourself!" He stumbled again when he tried to back away. But this time, his feet couldn't correct for the misstep. Tendrils of fog wound around his ankles and with a soft whump he landed on his backpack, shoulders raw where the straps cut into them. The sky was as grey as the walls around him.

Maybe it was just the wind. Maybe it was his imagination. Whatever the cause, he swore he saw someone, _something,_ flicker in the corner of his vision.

He didn't stop to find out. Sobbing, now, he dimly registered that he had scrambled back onto his feet and away. It felt like running in place, trapped in a reel that rewound over and over and over—until a grinning cadaver of metal and springs lunged from the fog.

For a moment he screamed. Then all was silent.

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWELVE**

HERE BE MONSTERS

* * *

No one was watching when Schmidt's fingers dug into his shoulders and steered him away from the commotion. Though Ash kicked and thrashed, though he scrabbled with his nails at his bindings, those hands were of iron and fear stole his voice away.

The vendors flitted here and there through the fog, too busy packing up to hear his whimpers for help. Or too callous—they made it more than clear where his welcome ended. He could do nothing as the last of the banners fluttered one after another into oblivion, as voices and turning engines joined them. The bark of Sergeant Avery ordering tardy stallholders left and right and left again drifted to his ears on the damp, until it, too, was smothered under the blanket cast over their heads. Silent. Stifling.

They passed by the windows of the boutique stores which bordered the square, glass lanterns lined up on a string, their golden light spilling forth onto the pavement to clutch with warm fingers at his ankles as it died. His heels scraped as they dug into the cobbles, but there was no one inside to see him. Empty seats. Empty counters. And empty light.

He was alone. If he pictured how that would feel but a few short weeks ago, he never would have imagined it to be so… heavy.

"Want me to carry ye?" The voice rumbled through the broad chest at his back and he flinched away from it, but strong hands kept him from falling. "'Cause I will and I bloody well can. _Move it."_

The black may have slunk down cracks and drains when the cavalry arrived, but it never truly left him. Never. Now, alone and desperate, he could see, feel, _taste_ it creeping once more into his eyes, the corners of his vision. He cast a long shadow. Screwing his eyes shut, he bit it back, pushed it away, even as he stumbled to match his captor's pace. It was so heavy, and its whispers so soothing—and his light seemed so faint before it. Weak. Small. Tears ran freely down his face. His cheek still throbbed where it was struck, wringing out more with every lance of pain like needles into his flesh. But it was better to be weak than to be like him.

It was better to be hurt than to hurt others.

Deeper into the quarter he was taken, past more windows, more lanterns. It would take only a single glancing pair of eyes to save him. But there was no one. Some glowed from within with that hollow light, lifeless. More remained dark, more and more the further they strayed. Ash had never been to this part of the Shambles before. And he could see how it earned its name; winding streets with turns and corners in strange places, and dead ends that made no sense. All around him, those frilled, shuttered buildings of painted wood the settlers left behind, leaning this way and that in ways no building should with twinkling fairy lights lashed to every porch and balustrade. And staring black eyes where windows should be.

Empty sockets in a leering metal skull. Pulling him in, down, down into—

He cried out when he was yanked back against a wall, stifled by an arm and a mouthful of leather. An elbow—the man learned his lesson the first time. He tasted sweat, that metallic tang that clung to him, and anger. Apprehension. Nerves pulled taut over tense muscles and worn thin.

Then he heard it. The clank of metal upon stone. Thud, scrape, thud, scrape. It was too regular a beat to be a door or sign clattering in the wind.

Footsteps

He froze against Schmidt's chest. There was only one sort of creature with footfalls like that.

Something lurched in the fog. Something misshapen, something hideous, a grinning, gap-toothed silhouette painted in grey upon grey. It was difficult to pick out from the shapes of cars and buildings. But it was there. He saw it, heard it, _felt_ it. Loose parts rattled and its fingers creaked and clicked.

He thought back to that shadow in market square and shuddered. He didn't want to believe it—that it could be an animatronic. Not here, not so far from the pizzeria. That was impossible. It had to be.

But he knew. Mike knew. So together they stayed, exposed there on the wall like flies caught in a floodlight. One sound, one glance their way… their hearts beat as one as the clunk of its feet echoed away from them, from silent walls and watching windows.

His voice scratched at his ear, a soft growl from between clenched teeth. "W'ye stay close and stay quiet if I let go?"

He didn't know who he was supposed to be afraid of any more, who he should run from, who he should trust. None of this made any sense. But he bit his lip and nodded through the tears, and slowly, slowly, those arms unwound from his mouth and torso.

"This way."

Did he have a choice? Ash crept after him down a narrow alleyway between the butcher's and the ice cream parlour, a dark channel cut into the fog. A gateway. Like stepping from this world into the next, into the land of the fey. His lips twisted in revulsion—the land of the fey stank of drains clogged with blood and sour milk. He tried to ignore the damp wisps which clung to every sill and drainpipe, the way they felt like breath on the back of his neck. His throat was dry as he swallowed. Was that thing still out there?

That thought was on _his_ mind, too. Schmidt's dark figure parted the fog where he swung round the corner into the next street over. He knelt behind the dumpster, hand straying once more inside his jacket—to his holster, Ash knew now. If there was a time to run, it was now, while he was distracted playing lookout.

He didn't. When a rough hand gestured him forwards, he stumbled across the cobbles in his wake, wincing at the treacherous crack of stones underfoot. Steely eyes flicked back at him. 'It's safe,' they said, and he wasn't sure how he knew. He couldn't read him before. But there was something… familiar about that gaze, as though it looked out at him from a faded old photograph. Little fingers reaching out to take it gently from the floor and set it back on the coffee table…

A firm hand wrapped around his arm and steered him away from the dumpster. Away from shelter and into the open, towards the dark shape waiting for them on the corner.

Darkness closing in, a cage, a tiny coffin. The car.

Heels dug in and limbs locked into place, panicked cries tumbling from his lips into the silence. No! He would not go back in the trunk! No, he would not be taken again! No, no, _no—_

"Yer goin' in t'front this time!" The man snapped—was there a desperate edge to his voice? "I swear. Just— _stop."_

But he was stone in his hands. Iron bands closed in around his lungs and squeezed. He couldn't fight as he kept to his word, as arms wrenched his feet free and hoisted him clear from the ground. He couldn't look as the door clicked open and he was forced into the seat with a hand on top of his head.

In the distance, he swore he heard someone screaming. Then the door slammed shut behind him.

He shrank away when Schmidt moved round to the driver's side, huddling away from him in his seat. Too small. His prison walls closed in around him, cold steel painted black. Too small with _him_ there. His dark energy, his anger, it took every last inch of space, every breath, until there was nothing left for Ash. The clunk of the driver's door sounded so final—as if on that note, all else ceased to be. Keys turned in the ignition and his world was consumed in the belly of the beast.

"Seatbelt."

He flinched when those eyes turned on him and fumbled to do as he was told. Once the man seemed satisfied that he was safely belted in, he huffed and turned out onto the street without indicating. It wasn't until they passed the barriers with a bump that Ash realised that it was a pedestrian zone. No words came out when he opened his mouth, not at first, and when they finally struggled free they were small and weak against the growl of the engine. "Where are you taking me?"

"Back t' Anchor."

He was taking him… home? Less than twenty-four hours ago he pressed him into the gravel with the barrel of a gun. None of this made any sense. His lips moved once more in a whisper. "Why?"

"Because," the man said, scowling, and swung the wheel around to take a hard left back onto Rambley Quay. Ash yelped as he was thrown into the door. "When the fog comes in like this, s'not safe. They know that. They know t' stay inside. But _you."_ The lines carved in around his eyes and the corners of his mouth deepened, bitter old wounds that could never fully heal. "Why the fuck didn't ye listen to me?"

Ash put as much space between them as possible and didn't respond—there was nothing to be said. Not to him. He didn't have to justify himself. He found no comfort in the rumble of pistons through the bones of his legs from the floor, the smell of leather and vinyl, the flash of the world passing him by. Details leapt out at him, some he recognised, but in the blink of an eye had dissolved once more into the mist. Somehow, he didn't think he wanted to know what was displayed on the speedometer right now.

Schmidt's knuckles turned white on the wheel. "Don't ye know _any_ of the stories, what ye were gettin' yerself into? Yer goin' 'ome, then soon's this lot clears up yer getting on the bus out and not comin' back. Understand?"

Still Ash said nothing. Is that what this was all about? His safety? Schmidt hit him and forced him into the trunk of his car and held him at gunpoint so he would be _safe?_ The dark came scratching at the windows, long fingers raking down glass, down the reflection of his own face. Black tears.

" **I chose him for you."**

Ash closed his eyes, breathed in, counted to ten, and let go. Let it out. When he opened them again, it was gone. When it came for him all those times before, it never spoke to him. But that voice… blades in the dark, singing on old stone. He knew it. Like a code embedded in his mind by an unknown author. The silence it left behind, the silence of a man who wanted to speak, but didn't know the right words, was the most suffocating of all.

"That sound," he murmured into the glass, to his reflected image. It felt easier than talking to the man himself, "was that—"

"There's nowt we can do fer 'im now." The words were hard and blunt, a bitter pill that was hard to swallow. The truth always was. "Seen it before, too many times. It's always when the fog comes in too fast. And always the tourists. Ye'd think they'd learn t' stay away."

"I thought those were just stories."

The reflection looked back at him with narrowed eyes. "An' where d'ye think the stories come from? Take a gander through't archives at the library sometime, try countin' how many missin' people ye see before ye lose track and they all start lookin' the same. Those aren't stories." He looked away again. "Those're people."

Ash's lips twisted. Dad… he was one of them. He wasn't sure he could stomach the thought of seeing his face, his eyes, looking out at him from under a bold-stamped headline. MISSING! SUSPECT DISAPPEARS BEFORE TRIAL! His fingers dug into the knees of his jeans.

That man at market square, he said Gael took them. He said he killed them. Carver did, too.

Hot tears pricked at his eyes. It wasn't true. He couldn't have. Dad… he would never…

"I know." He swallowed. God, he hated the way his voice cracked around his tears, like thawing ice in the springtime. "Do you?"

There was no warning before Schmidt slammed his foot down on the brakes. The force flung Ash from his seat, into the belt. He gagged as it cut into his windpipe. He hung there for a moment, frozen in place on the edge of the precipice—and then the rest of the world caught up with them and the car sank back onto its rear wheels. His back hit the seat again and his stomach heaved, but it had carried on without him. Panic clutched at his heart where he left it on the dashboard.

But Schmidt wasn't looking at him. Nor was he looking at the road. His eyes gazed into the fog at something only he could see. Ash knew that look, that... emptiness. The old film reel playing in front of his eyes of things he'd rather forget. Jaw clenched, knuckles pressed so tight and pale against the skin that they might tear out and into him like Wolverine claws at any moment. He knew that too.

"We're 'ere," he said stiffly.

Ash's fingers scrabbled for the belt clip. He threw himself from the car and didn't shut it behind him, numb to the tears burning at his cheeks. He heard Schmidt get out as he fled past the anchor to the front door. Felt his eyes on his back.

"Ash…"

He didn't look back when he slammed the door behind him.

He stayed there, back to the wood, and didn't move until he heard the deep-throated growl of the car rolling away up the road. Until the only remaining sound was the steady tick tock of the pendulum clock by the counter.

Mr. Cooper wasn't at the front desk. Ash almost tripped over the usual offering of toast on the third floor landing, and saw that he slathered it in Nutella instead of jam. Something twisted in his heart. He never really thought much of the unexpected room service—not until now. Not until he crossed that unseen, unspoken line and remembered how it felt to be hated.

Mr. Cooper didn't hate him.

The click of the lock in his door behind him was the most comforting sound he'd heard in his life. He never thought he'd miss the bald spots on the carpet, those mustard yellow curtains, his squeaky bed. His sparrows were once again lined up along the balcony railing. Eleven, he counted with a sigh of relief. Merida, Jamie, Felicity, Spark, Ratchet, Samwise... everyone accounted for, plus a new face.

His bag clunked when he dumped it from his shoulder to the floor. That... didn't sound right. Frowning now, he set his last slice of toast down on the bedside table and knelt to rifle through its contents. Tablet. Expected, but he knew its weight. A plastic bag that crunched under his fingers. Lavender, he recalled now. And those would be the candles that Straker gave him. With... bigger problems to worry about, angrier ones with a proven track record of violence, Straker's words were pushed to the back of his mind. Now they bubbled forth like sulphur from a volcanic pool.

 _'To rise, we must fall.'_

His hand closed around a battered cardboard box. The warmth, the hope and solidarity Straker drew from it over the years and poured back in turn, it came to him now and he closed his eyes. Just breathe. He hadn't even realised his hands were shaking.

He settled down on the bed and pulled the deck carefully from its box. Soft, frayed edges played against his fingers as he went through the motions of shuffling them, familiar now from years of Pokemon. Next turn—draw a card. He thought of that man's dark, angry stare, exhaled, and turned it over.

Knight of swords.


	14. Chapter Thirteen: Burning Bridges

**A/N:** Hey folks, sorry for the delay on this one. It's an extremely long chapter! Also another one featuring Eric.

Unfortunately, I have some bad (also good in a way) news. I've made the decision to overhaul this story into a completely original one with nothing but my own characters. Not much of a change to be honest, since it's so drastically different from FNAF anyway. The fandom has been slowing down a lot and I don't have as much time to write as I used to, so I'd like to focus my time on projects that'll actually earn me some royalties. I think the story would get a better response without its FNAF ties, since I notice that a lot of people never make it past the prologue. Maybe it's not the story your average FNAF fan wants.

I haven't made a call yet on whether or not I should complete the entire first draft as it is first and _then_ edit it, or scrub the fic or rewrite. Let me know what you think, especially if you haven't before now! If you enjoy my work and want to support me, consider following me on Tumblr or Twitter or buying my art on Redbubble. House of Swords also has its own dedicated Tumblr where you can ask the characters questions and find out more about their background and the world they live in, if you like!

* * *

 **CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

 **Burning Bridges**

* * *

"You can't be serious!"

The desk— _his_ desk—still smelled strongly of gravy, and felt sticky under his hands. Jeremy claimed a victim after all. He wished he could say that didn't kindle a savage flare of glee inside; he liked to think he was the better person. But he wished he could have seen the look on her face even more.

Carver sipped. This time, it was a cup from Rambley's clutched firmly in her talons. "I think you'll find that I am deadly serious, and I want those charges dropped." When Eric didn't move, or react in any way other than to continue staring at her in disbelief, she sighed. _"Now."_

Careful, whispered his good sense, that castle in his mind built of numbers and probabilities and rational thought. She's the one holding your leash, the reason you're here. You know that. Is your pride worth the consequences?

His fingers dug into the wood, shaving away curls of varnish under his nails. Shrill protests tumbled from the castle walls—that's teak, that's priceless! Stop! But one by one they were silenced. Extinguished.

Consequences be damned. This wasn't about his pride.

"Why?" He fought to keep the frustration from his voice. A valiant battle, but one he was losing. And slowly, slowly, the walls began to crumble. "This has nothing to do with the pizzeria. He did worse to him than… than the blasted robots did!"

"I know that," she said coolly, "but it's been two days now. Everyone knows who he is and where he works. Our name will be dragged into this regardless."

Our? As if she had a stake in this, something to lose? No. Not the way he did.

"Does it matter? People are going to talk regardless. At least this way—" He drew in a long, slow breath, and let it out even slower. Getting angry wouldn't do him any good, nor anyone else for that matter. But he couldn't ignore how deep his fingers bit into the desk. _"We,_ look good. And it gets him off the streets for a while."

"Frankly, this sounds more like a personal agenda. I know your history with him."

"I think you're confused about who has the agenda. I just want my staff to be safe… there's no telling what he'll do next."

"You want him to be safe," she echoed, and though her expression remained unchanged there was a note of derision to her words, bitter poison. "Yet you gave him this job. And you let him come here, even last night. How desperate must you be?"

It took all his self control and more to keep himself from throttling her there and then. Nine years. Nine years he withered under that same disdainful stare, doing everything he was told without question or complaint—because he had no choice, because she knew.

But when she smiled, it struck a flint inside.

The spark took hold. Years of accumulated dust and baggage caught alight and in that moment were consumed. All that he was and ever had been became fire—and fire did not care for material things. Wood splintered under his hands.

"He came here because he had nowhere else to go!" He countered, and hated the taste of smoke in his words. Even bent to look her dead in the eye, he towered over her. So too did the bear. He could feel it. But she didn't shrink away in the shadow it cast. "That—that monster took him from his own home. He felt safer here with _them_ than alone."

Even though he knew the animatronics were dangerous.

… Even though he knew Eric lied to him.

"Don't… doesn't that worry you?"

Carver drummed on the lid of the cup with those false pink nails, lips pursed, oblivious to the vast and terrible presence sharing the space with them. "The potential fallout from this concerns me more. We're just one bad front pager away from shutting down for good, and when we do, all those files go public. _All_ of them. And if—"

" _Damn it!"_ This time she did flinch when his fists slammed back down on the desk, and it was all too satisfying. His hair shifted with every breath from above like the bellows of a foundry. It smelled of hot metal and decay. "Let me have this!"

"Why, to make you feel better about your guilt?"

He wanted to say more. So many words, so many years, wasted and burning inside. They needed a voice. But when he opened his mouth, the click of a door cut him off.

Pascal froze in the threshold, a cornered mouse. Watery eyes flicked from one face to another. He heard the shouting. "Am I… interrupting something?" He squeaked between coughs and cleared throat, shuffling to hide the title on the ream of papers clutched firmly in hand. Still didn't trust him, then, like most people with a shred of sense and decency. Like Ash.

His lips twisted bitterly. "No," he said, pushing away from the desk—he could take a hint. "I was just leaving."

She remained expressionless, but her knuckles were noticeably white around her coffee. There were sticky plasters on her fingers. "Please. And next time, leave your personal life at the door."

"I do. But he made it personal when Ash stumbled in here bleeding."

Pascal shrank away as he stormed from the office. He could never fathom why the younger man seemed to fear him. He was hardly the pinnacle of male fitness and aggression—that was Mike's forte. Now, though, he was beginning to understand. It showed in his eyes, that ancient and unbridled forge-fire which flowed like molten iron through his veins, in the way he held himself. He shied away when he stood straight and tall.

Behind him, the bear smiled.

He slammed the door.

Five minutes he wasted pacing up and down the hallway, up and down, up and down, as if he could walk off his frustration. When that didn't help—and when the day guard creaked open the door of the security office to stare at him on his fifteenth pass—he went to the break room and spent another five glaring back at his own face. Employee of the month, six times in a row, only to be unseated by a spider. His eyes narrowed. That was probably Jeremy's doing, and he was sure there was a life lesson in there somewhere. By the time he snatched his things from his locker and shouldered through the front door, it was well past eight and he was still furious.

The wind blew in from the sea today, bringing with it cold and cloud. He stayed there on the step as it clawed at his clothes, casting his gaze out like a line over that iron expanse, onwards and onwards until it split on a blade's edge at the sky. He didn't know what he was hoping to catch. A reason to stay angry, perhaps. But the sea existed as it always had, unmoved by his outrage, and as he watched, he crumbled, and it ebbed from him and out with the tide.

Was it telling that he had the number for reception at the local police station saved into his phone? He didn't want to think about that as he hit dial.

"G'morning, you've reached Holyhead Police, how can I—"

"Jackson?" Eric cut in, frowning, "where's Vera?"

Ponderous chewing crackled down the line. He was every bit as large as Avery was thin, as jolly as he was sour. In any other situation Eric would've taken them for a comedy duo. "Caught the 'flu, I'm filling in. Not that I'm gonna complain about missing foot patrol, hey? Need something?"

"There was an emergency call logged from the pizzeria last night, yes?"

"Yep-a-doo! But, why—"

"Forget about it." Eric's fingers tightened around the phone until it trembled in his grip. "It… it was just a misunderstanding. Poor boy. He doesn't want to press charges any more."

"Heh, second night on the job and jumping at shadows?"

He turned and glanced behind him through the pizzeria's darkened door, into the eyes of something staring right back. A shadow, yes, one cast by pain and memories that could not be forgotten. "Something like that," he said, watching as black claws raked down the glass, leaving blood in their wake.

" _You took him from me."_

Even when it stepped back into the darkness and out of sight, he could feel its accusing stare prickling on his skin.

"Okay, I'll call the sarge now and clear that up for you. Was there anything els—"

Eric hung up. Once more he looked to the endless sea, one last time, hoping to find there what it stole from him. Then he turned and walked to his car.

Keys clinked. The lock blipped. He threw his coat and satchel unceremoniously in the passenger seat and got in. Something felt off… and his seat was cranked forward more than he remembered, jamming his grasshopper legs under the steering wheel. Adjusting the rear view mirror, he saw a rotting yellow maw peeled back from its teeth, and hollow black eyes.

" _Behind—"_

Cold metal pressed into the back of his head with a distinct _click._

"Mornin'," growled a familiar British voice, all teeth and harsh lines, "we're goin' fer a drive."

His grip tightened on the steering wheel. "You have some nerve coming here after what you did."

Mike was slouched in the back seat, arm thrown over the headrest. One mud-caked boot kicked up onto the cupholder between the front seats. But his trigger finger meant business—the barrel dug into Eric's scalp. "And you've some nerve givin' me lip after what _you_ did. Get moving."

For one brief, savage moment, Eric considered doing exactly that—driving and driving, down the hill and right off the wall, and taking them both to the bottom of the sea. There was something strangely… cathartic in the notion of taking control of his own fate, and ending this story much the same way it started. But then he remembered the look on his face when he was just sixteen, and Avery came to tell him exactly where they found Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt… his mouth twisted bitterly. He started the engine.

Eyes narrowed, the same colour as the gun in his hand. "That's what I thought. 'Ead down 'Ill Road and left onto t'quay."

"What's the point of this exercise? There are more efficient ways to get revenge."

"Ye'll find out."

Eric scowled, but did as he was told. The light-up Freddy waved farewell as he turned out of the parking lot. He wondered, briefly, if it knew that he might not be coming back. There was no one on the sidewalk on the drive down the serpent road, no one in the gardens or in the windows of their houses. The fairy lights winked, ever cheerful, as the very first strands of mist caught in their wires like hair.

Mike knew, too, that there was no one to witness him—that he was completely at his mercy. He made no effort to conceal himself as they coasted along an empty waterfront. "Remember Arkwright Ave?"

"Of course," said Eric stiffly—he already knew where they were going.

Monotone 'lefts' and 'rights' barked from the back seat dimly registered in his mind, but never reached his limbs. They moved independently on a pre-programmed routine, automatic. Just like an animatronic. The thought prompted a humourless smile. Did he think he wouldn't remember after all the times he drove him here when he was too drunk to do it himself? Did he think he wouldn't come here night after night to witness it, the monument of all his past mistakes?

It stood out, stark against the fog. Blackened ribs jutting from blackened earth, a burnt corpse where a home once stood. Seagulls squabbled between the bones as they picked it clean. Eric didn't have to get out of the car to know the sound of the wind as it wailed between the empty spaces. But he did.

The slam of the door behind him felt too loud and too sudden, disrespectful. This was a burial ground. Not for the dead, but for the past. "Are you happy now?" He murmured to the silence, "do you feel better now you've made me look at it again?"

Mike didn't answer. Boots crunched as he passed between the bones, exactly where the front door once stood. Snowdrops still sprouted defiantly from beneath the timber—he was careful to step around them as he pressed on. And then he stopped there, staring at the shapes marked out in different shades of grass. Shapes that would've been an entrance hallway, a kitchen, that little nook where he and Ash used to curl up for reading time. "Sofa would've been 'ere. Spent enough time passed out on it t'know." His lips quirked. "'Til the Pokemon theme blasted me awake at seven in the bloody mornin'."

"Mike…"

But he didn't stop. He traced out that path from the kitchen, round the corner and down the hallway, down to the second bedroom with two windows and the lemon tree right outside. It was as rampant as ever, scattered fruit rotting where they fell. His boot nudged against one and he bent to pick it up. "This was Ash's room. Used to 'ave all them stars and planets 'anging from't ceiling, remember? And the wee space shuttle 'e painted." His features twisted, and the lemon thudded to the ground. "But it weren't enough fer ye to take all that from 'im. Yeh want the rest, too."

"You're not the only person who cares about him!" Eric snapped, "and you weren't the only person who cared about Gael."

Eyes flashed at him like steel. He turned, slowly, knuckles tightening on the grip of the pistol. The lemon was an easy victim, and a convenient stand-in for Eric's face or fingers; in a moment it was crushed underfoot. "Funny way o' showin' ye care."

"And shooting a man in cold blood isn't?"

"I call it justice. Ye know what ol' Jakey used to say about squealin' pigs." _Click._ Gunmetal flashed in the cold. "Ye wanna squeal?"

Eric didn't smile. "I'm not sure I would look to him for advice on anything more important than my horoscope."

"That weren't a rhetorical question."

"Why would I? It never solves anything."

"No, it doesn't. Yer damn reports never did and s'bout time ye learned that. _This_ solves things." And he levelled the gun at him, right between the eyes.

This was it, then. The revelation tasted bitter as he stared down the barrel. He wished that he could say he was surprised, that he never saw this coming. It would be a bold-faced lie. He knew that when Mike last held him at gunpoint, sixteen years ago, when his eyes were glazed and red and tears streaked heartbreak down his cheeks. His hand shook, then.

It didn't now.

But he wouldn't let him have the satisfaction of a clear conscience. If he had to bear that cross, then Mike could take it from his shoulders. "And Ash?" He said quietly. "What would he say?"

Their gaze met down the sight, and in that moment it was the broken eyes staring back. The eyes of a man who lost everything.

"He doesn't remember me."

It was an uncomfortable silence that followed. The silence of forgotten men and held breath, and a finger waiting on the trigger. The wingbeats of gulls fleeing into the updraft were a silence themselves, condemning him to his fate alone.

But he wasn't alone. The Freddy costume was there, always. Waiting, too, for the moment that everything would change.

Mike hesitated. The scales tipped. The weight in the air shifted onto his arm, onto the lines of his face, and slowly, slowly, he lowered the gun.

A new, shared silence, equally uncomfortable—beeping split it in two. A welcome excuse to avoid all eye contact as he checked the device on his belt. "Looks like it's yer lucky day," he muttered, clicking the safety and sliding the pistol back into its holster, "I've got places t'be."

"You bugged his house."

He grunted. "Maybe. None of yer business. Ash can't go out in this."

"Funny way of showing you care," Eric echoed in words that rang hollow.

"Don't ye fuckin' start w' me, I did what I 'ad to! If it'll save 'im, if someone 'as to be the bad guy…" His lips turned down at the corners, dragging the lines, the wounds, deeper into his face. The kind of mark only death could leave behind—the kind that would never heal. "Better me than _them._ You 'ave no idea. No idea 'ow 'ard it was to let 'im go. I won't lose 'im because of you."

He stepped out over the snowdrops where the wall would have been. Into the fog, turning up his collar against the wind, his eyes against the coming storm. "Ye can thank 'im later, 'cause I'm not doin' this fer you."

He didn't look back.

For a long time Eric stood there, dimly aware of the fact that he could just get in his car and go home, leave this lonely place behind and try to bury its memory in books and gin and a roaring fire. But something held him there in the bones and ashes. Freddy watched him as he picked his way over the doorstep, over the fallen lintel. He reached out with one hand to steady himself on a beam that flaked away black under his skin. Everything he touched burned eventually.

If he closed his eyes he could still see it all, perfect in his memory. The kitchen where Gael spent so many hours over cookies and cakes when he could no longer dance. The little nook in the hallway where he would curl up with Ash and read to him. The flowers in the vase on the dinner table: lilies, irises, sometimes roses from Eric's own garden. And during that special time of year when his hometown in New Hampshire was blanketed in white, snowdrops. Eric painted it all over the harsh, painful truth.

But he could still see the black eyes, ever patient, burning into him behind his eyelids.

"Still waiting for me to die?" He said to it, and his lips twisted. They tasted of salt. He reached up to touch his cheek with trembling fingers and they came away wet.

" _That is your choice to make,"_ said the bear. _"I wait for you to die… or for you to live."_

* * *

 _1997_

If something was out of place, chances were that Gael had something to do with it. But as Eric considered the empty stage, he had to admit that this went above and beyond his usual standard.

Those suits weighed a hundred pounds. It was only feasible to wear them at all because of the motor-assisted joints. The thought of Gael loading them onto a sackbarrow and wheeling them off, one by one, all on his own... it didn't sit right with him. Mike maybe. But Mike wouldn't pull a stunt like this.

"Yeah, I'm sure you think you're funny," he said into the dark. His voice echoed strangely back to him from the walls. Something felt... wrong. Like the empty space wasn't empty at all, like there was something there that shouldn't be. Something that cast its shadow over him. If he reached out, just far enough, he could touch it...

"I'm sure you think you scared me, too." Goosebumps prickled like needles over his skin—the shadow was cold. "This is the part where you jump out at me from backstage with your mask on, right?"

There was no answer.

Eric felt his way to the controls for the stage lights until his fingers closed, half-blind, around the big lever for the big lamps. Nothing on this earth could hide from them. They spat, crackled, and winked out. Just like the horror movies.

He started to wish that he bought one of those new Nokia phones like Jake and Gael did. It was a long walk back through the main hall to get to the phone at reception. There was one in the kitchen, too, but that was the last place he wanted to go fumbling around in the dark.

The clack of his shoes echoed, first on the stairs to the main stage, then the polished flagstones. A lonely sound. The eyes of stuffed seagulls glinted in the silver touch of moonlight slithering in through the windows. They cursed him with their gaze, countless pale ghosts casting their shadows from the ceiling, as if it were he who shot them. The beams groaned and sighed above him in the wind blowing in from the sea. Though the building was filled with the dead, it felt strangely alive.

That was a ridiculous thought. It was just a few taxidermied gulls and dried starfish. No one else—

But it was a hospital for Spanish 'flu, once. Tuberculosis before that. And before that, a shipyard. The colonials hardly concerned themselves with workplace safety. He tried not to think about that as he passed into the foyer. The stage was empty—but he felt eyes boring into his back.

There was a little figure huddled on the floor by the front desk. Bundled into his raincoat, as if that would keep out the cold and the dark. He scrambled to his feet when he heard the footsteps. "Daddy?"

"Ash!" Eric hurried to check on him. He was cold, frightened, but stood patiently as he checked his temperature. His schoolbag was packed and ready to go. What was he doing out here on his own?

And still no sign of Gael.

"Daddy forgot something and went to get it. But he's been gone a long time." Ash fidgeted, gaze flashing into the encroaching dark, into all the corners where shadows lurked and rustled. The fear showed clearly in the white of his eyes. He huddled into Eric's leg and he ruffled his hair, leaning over to flick the light on the counter. The switch clicked, but it didn't turn on.

"How long have you been here?"

But Eric didn't get an answer. The phone rang and startled him damn near out of his skin.

"Yeh, I see ye." Mike's voice crackled on the line, but it held. At least one thing still worked. "Took ye long enough t'notice 'im standin' out 'ere on 'is own."

Eric shot a glance up at the camera overlooking the foyer, scowling. "Any sign of Gael?"

"Ye think I aren't lookin'? Can't find a bleedin' trace of 'im anywhere."

"And the mascots?"

"Found one. Ol' Bonnie's standin' reight out me window."

Eric's frown deepened. "Why would anyone drag that raggedy thing up three flights of stairs?"

"Don't ask me. I di'nt see or 'ear nothin'. Just looked up and there 'e was." Mike paused. "It's 'ard t'win a staredown with a robot."

"That's ridiculous. They can't walk on their own, let alone climb stairs. Someone must—"

"Tell that to 'im. Jakey went 'ome ages ago—oi!"

Even over the phone, Eric could hear the shriek that split the night, nails on a blackboard. Or on glass. It scraped against his ears and down his spine. Ash shuddered at the sound, wrapping his arms tighter around his leg and burying his face in the denim.

"Get yer mucky paws off ye dirty great rabbit, I'm not buffin' out them scratches. Ugh—Will said 'e left 'is cordless in the drawers. Call me if ye find 'im." And he hung up.

The low beep he left behind was as lonely a sound, somehow, as the echo of shoes in an empty hall. Troubled now, Eric returned the phone to the hook and hunted around behind the counter until he found the cordless handset. 'Manager' was written in Twink on the side. "Come on," he said to Ash with as gentle a smile as he could muster, taking his hand, "let's go find your dad."

Ash sniffed and nodded, and squeezed his fingers tight.

"Are you scared?"

"I don't like the dark," the boy mumbled. He stayed close to his leg as they walked into the narrow passageways of the grotto, tugging on his lip with his fingers. "It touches me... and says things to me."

Eric frowned. The fake kelp and seashells strung up all over the rocky tunnels cast strange shadows in the safety lights. And the barnacles looked far too much like teeth. "What sort of things?"

"There's a door. I have to find it. If I want to go home I have to find the door."

That chill scuttling over his skin dug in its claws. He squeezed Ashley's hand, but even his warmth couldn't chase away the dead cold of its touch, the weight of it on his shoulders. "Well, promise me and your dad you won't go looking for strange doors. You never know what might be behind them."

"I promise."

There came a fork in the road. On the right yawned the door to the maintenance area, conspicuously open and dark inside. He breathed a sigh of relief—the last thing he wanted was to cross the last chamber on his path back to the hall. Sometimes the technicians forgot to turn off the resident sea monster after closing. He'd gained more than a few grey hairs from a surprise attack in the gloom.

Ash hesitated. "I don't like Letiche either."

"He's just a robot, he won't hurt you."

"Sometimes robots hurt people in daddy's scary movies."

The door wailed on its hinges when he nudged it open. "I keep telling him he watches far too much Terminator," he scoffed. He picked out a miniature flashlight from his keychain and flicked it on to find the light glittering on the tears on Ashley's cheeks. But he refused to make a sound, and stayed bravely at his side as he stepped further and further into the dark. "You're going to be all right. I won't let it get you, okay?"

He squeezed his hand. "Okay."

Around the corner and down the corridor. And there, in the alcove with the access door to the rear of Letiche's stage, stood a hunched form with pointed ears. It straightened up at the sound of their footsteps and the light glinted on glassy eyes.

Garou.

Eric pushed Ashley behind him, keeping the beam of the flashlight low. There was someone inside. He couldn't see the gaps in the costume's wrists. "Gael?" His posture... it was familiar, but all wrong, as though someone else was wearing his skin.

Slowly, the muzzle turned, and the red eyes fixed on his face. "Why aren't you wearing yours?" It was Gael's voice, but dull, monotone, sleep talking. Some of the words were stressed in the wrong way and the wrong order.

"Showtime's over." Eric rubbed soothing circles into the back of Ashley's hand with his thumb. It was trembling. "It's time to go home."

"I am home. He showed me the way."

"He?"

"The dark," Ash whispered into the back of his leg.

The crimson stare didn't waver. "Balor. You have to wear your body. You have to wear it so he can show you too."

Footsteps echoed in the grotto. Large, heavy, the sound of something powerful. The door rattled in its frame as a shape lurched past. Bulky, with broad shoulders and a distinct rounded belly. Freddy.

That... that was _his_ costume. No one could be...

The head turned to consider him for a moment. A long moment that hung in the air, a moment of held breath and racing hearts. Eric took a step back and kept Ash close. He couldn't explain why. It was just a robot, he said so himself. But those eyes looked... alive. Like the building. Like the dark.

Then the moment was broken, and Freddy turned away and continued his march alone.

"Then stay blind," Gael murmured, whether to him or to Freddy, none could say. Then he crumpled… and fell.

* * *

 **Special thanks:** Springlockedfoxy


	15. Chapter Fourteen: Risky Business

**Sorry it took so long to update. Even then, the end is extremely rushed and it probably shows. The overall lack of response on this story is making it harder and harder to force these out. Unless things change and more people give me feedback on whether I'm doing this right or wrong, chapter 15 will probably be the last. I hope this was worth the wait, anyway.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

 **Risky Business**

* * *

The Freddy on the roof had seemed so cheery not so long ago, waving him on to success and good fortune with a doff of its hat.

Ash stared at it for moments, minutes, all of them too long—it stared back. The dying sun glittered in its eyes. What were once encouraging gestures became taunts, threats, daring him to step forward and enter its waiting jaws. Was he willing to lay down his life in pursuit of the truth? Come in, come in, don't be shy!

It was amazing how things could change in just twenty-four hours.

The backpack was heavy on his shoulders as he pushed open the door. Voices rose from somewhere inside, one he recognised, one he didn't, both oblivious to his presence. He wished that the door squeaking closed behind him didn't sound so final—even the kiss of the ocean wasn't as cold as the shadows within this building.

"That's not funny, I could've lost a hand!"

"Um, it was, like, _totally_ funny?" Said Jeremy as the two of them rounded the corner and into the foyer, hands and eyes raised to the sky. His eyebrows, too, or at least to his hairline. "Everyone heard you screaming. Like, _everyone."_

"Seriously, man—"

"Look, I got it on video!"

Ash didn't know the other staff member. He was tall, blond. Furious, too, but he still leaned in to watch whatever travesty unfolded on Jeremy's phone.

He was right—that was a distinctive squeal.

"What happened?" He asked as he clocked in at the desk.

"Some kid shoved a bit of pizza in Freddy's mouth during his scheduled walk around the floor," the tall one scowled, "so I thought I'd take one for the team and try and get it out, right? 'Cept the asshole damn near bit my arm off."

"Yeah, but, like, you stuck your freaking hand in there. What else was gonna happen?"

The blood drained from Ash's face. "They let those things walk around? In the middle of the day?"

"Um, yeah? It's not like anyone else is dumb enough to, like, shove their limbs in a working machine, _Adam."_ Jeremy cocked an eyebrow, the last word very much directed at his companion, who turned away his gaze and muttered under his breath.

No. No, that couldn't be right. Johnson, Carver, they knew what these animatronics were capable of. That there was something fundamentally wrong with them, right to the core, something that couldn't be fixed. How many of his predecessors had they killed? And at any moment that could happen to a customer, an innocent kid… they wouldn't just…

The fist at Ash's side clenched tighter still, until the nails dug into the palm of his hand. Johnson let the day shift treat them like props, like toys covered in cake crumbs and glitter. And they had no idea. "What if they malfunction? Do you have any idea how strong they are? Because I do." His other hand strayed to his ribs, where the bruises Foxy left behind still stood out dark and purple on his skin. But at least they were only bruises. He was lucky, and thankful.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," the other one, Adam, snapped as he strode to the door. "You're preaching to the choir. It's not me you've got to convince."

At once Jeremy descended upon him with battered notebook in hand. "You heard him, they're, like, _dangerous._ This could be the scoop I need—that makes you the witness. Wanna make a statement before you go?"

"Yeah," the teen said, looking at him like he was insane—which was entirely possible, "fuck you." With that, he pushed outside to nurse his pride in peace.

"Adam Higgins, quote… fuck… you…" Jeremy repeated as he scribbled it down, then tucked pen and paper away with a knowing wink. "Y'know, it would be a reeeal shame if that video just, like, happened to show up on Instagram."

"I'm not getting involved," Ash muttered, stepping around him. He was too tired and too sore for this, and longed for the relative comfort of his chair. But a hand pushed him back by his sternum and he had to bite down on his words before they struck.

"Hey, come on! You got a minute? I wanna talk… business with you."

His eyes went to the clock mounted on the wall behind the desk. It wasn't midnight—yet. "I've got five," he said, removing the hand from his torso. "Is this 'blackmailing me with my baby photos' business or something actually important?"

Jeremy hesitated. "Do you _have_ baby photos?"

"No."

"Okay. So, I have a… proposition for you. You're looking for something, right? And I'm the kinda guy you wanna know if you're looking for things."

Ash scowled. "And how would you know that?"

His answer was a flash of his pearly whites and a coquettish flick of the wrist. "I, like, know _everyone?_ Their business is my business. Comprenez vous?" He perched on the desk, then laced his fingers together and gazed at him artfully over the top of them. "You're looking for something. I'm looking for something. Like, we should totally work together, right?"

The offer was… tempting, if he really was the cutthroat gossip broker he claimed to be. It seemed that they had common interests—and enemies. But Ash didn't know who he was supposed to trust any more.

And he was running out of time.

The minute hand ticked closer and closer to midnight. Tick, tick, tick. Already, he could feel the building beginning to change. The shadows growing longer, the seconds growing shorter. The groan as the sea wind battered at the walls and windows. And one by one, as the notes of the song struck out from the dark, the lights snapped off.

"Here, I'll give you my number." He grabbed for his phone in his pocket with hasty fingers. "We'll talk about this later, but you really have to go."

Jeremy was in no hurry as he typed it in, tongue between his teeth. Oblivious or not to Ash dancing from foot to foot on the spot as he checked it, rechecked it, then checked it one more time just to be sure. And why would he be? As far as he knew, it was just a failing business with a proven track record of workplace accidents.

Something moved in the arcade.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he grinned, pocketing his own phone, complete with sparkly case and Vocaloid charms, into his bag as he got back to his feet and went at last to the door. "See you tomorrow maybe?"

"Maybe," said Ash, trying to ignore the fact that he stepped right through the bloody wolf footprints as if they weren't there at all. Perhaps to him, none of this was. "It's a different place at night."

* * *

Maybe being the first to move was Foxy's shtick. The computer chair wasn't even warm when Ash spied him picking his way down the steps of his spot in the arcade. Hunched, arms hanging loose in front of him, even as his legs worked in a stiff, mechanical rhythm. One knee up, forward, and down, then a pivot of the hips and the other soon followed.

Like a puppet, he thought with a shiver. Pulled along by invisible strings.

So it was him shuffling about while Jeremy was still here… but he didn't have time to dwell on that thought as he left his recording software running and flicked over to the stage camera to make sure that Freddy and friends were still in place. They weren't.

"Yeah, they're already up," he said into the office phone as he slid his tablet back under the keyboard, "is it always like this?"

"In all honesty? No," came the answer. "I've never seen them rush, and never twice in a row. They wait and try to catch you off guard. At least, that's what they did to… um, with any luck they'll stay back to lick their wounds tonight."

"They don't even have tongues!"

"Oh dear, someone's having a rough night already. I have a tin of hot chocolate somewhere if you want one."

His voice might have been soothing, but a bitter taste still burned on Ash's tongue. He couldn't reconcile the image of the man who had helped him, who patched up his injuries and came to get him when he was in danger, with the one who lied to his face—and would have continued to do so if circumstances never changed. It was hard to say for sure what he considered more important: his employee's safety, or burying the company's dirty laundry. And that made him uneasy.

But he supposed that Eric wasn't the one who called the shots around here, not really. Johnson certainly wasn't.

"How long have you put up with this?" He said as Foxy stopped to peer up at him through the camera, eyelids mismatched, his mouth gaping open in a smile that might have been goofy by daylight. False pirate laughter echoed through the halls, raking along his gooseflesh like the rusted point of a hook. Fear, cold, it all felt the same.

Eric was busy making coffee. The line did nothing to filter out the scrape of drawers, the clatter of a teaspoon in a mug. A welcome distraction from a question he didn't want to answer, perhaps; it was a long time before he did. "Since this place opened," he mused over the hiss of a kettle in the background, "so… nine years?"

"Nine years, and you never got a better job?"

The silence was all he needed to know why. He knew better than to ask on what terms Carver kept him tied here, so he clicked back to the main hall and tried to pretend that Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, they weren't looking at _him._ They were just admiring the pretty, pretty light of the camera, flashing on and off. Off and on. He could see it reflected in their eyes.

"You know, since you asked…" Eric's voice was low when he spoke again. He sounded so... tired. "If I could hand in my notice tomorrow, I'd like to be a florist. Acting never worked out for me and that was next on my wish list."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, I have quite the pair of green thumbs. Award-winning, even, not to blow my own trumpet—Bayou the Sea, 2009, 2010 and 2013."

"That's an awful name for a magazine."

"I'm glad you share my disdain for puns. Now keep an eye on them, shout if you see them coming this way. I'm bringing hot drinks and cookies."

Ash clicked obediently back to the arcade camera, only to find a tipping hourglass where his cursor used to be. Each turn sent his hopes tumbling deeper and deeper into the pit of despair gathering in the bottom of his heart; he never knew that despair stank of hot dust and wires. The screen froze on the image of an empty room, the software unresponsive, and booting the task manager only confirmed his suspicions.

Oh. Oh no.

"Hey, um, are you there? Eric?" But there was no answer—he had already hung up.

He bit his lip as he returned his own handset to its cradle. He was going to be okay. Eric was okay. He'd be over here in a minute with snacks, and they could shut the door and figure this out in safety. Everything was under control—

Something slammed into the window. He jolted away with a cry and caught his foot on the bottom of the chair, bouncing off the filing cabinets and onto the tiles. His palms stung from the impact. Winded, he rolled onto his back and scrambled for the door, never once taking his eyes off that dark figure in the window. The mirrored surface meant that Foxy couldn't see him, but he heard him scream. Amber eyes raked blindly across the room.

Just a little further. Almost to the door. Almost…

His hand knocked against one of the mugs left discarded on the floor and sent it rolling into a cabinet. He froze, a rabbit caught in headlights, when that burning stare locked onto him. Then in a flash of crimson the fox was gone. He threw himself onto his feet and at the door as those footfalls echoed like thunder through the foyer. "ERIC!"

Muffled cursing, the clatter and smash of a laden tray. He was there at the door to his office, favouring his left leg with a grimace of pain. The previous night took its toll on his body—he could barely walk. "I'm coming—damn it!"

Ash didn't wait. One arm around his waist, weight pivoted off his knee, just like before. Like an ungainly machine they hobbled for the security office, but Foxy was faster. The force of him hitting the door a second after Ash slammed it sent him flying. But the the bars locked into place and kept him from smashing it open.

He looked up at Eric from the tiles, aching in bones he couldn't even name. If he was going to become this well acquainted with the floor he'd put down a rug. "I'm glad you have longer arms than me."

Eric's smile was thin. "You're welcome."

"Did you know he could sprint like that?"

"I've been told, but… seeing is believing. Maybe from now on we should just stay in here."

The office was too small for one person, let alone two. The very thought made the clamps tighten around his chest. But it was better than death. He found and switched on a couple of spare desk lamps; their light couldn't chase away the shadow of fear, not completely, but made it easier to ignore. Eric watched this little ritual but didn't comment, and for that he was thankful.

Foxy watched, too, from the larger window beside the door, his efforts at kicking it down abandoned. The pinpricks of his eyes tracked him as he approached. They looked at each other through the bars, and one hand rose to trace a finger down the face of Ash's reflection. Then it curled into a fist against the glass.

"I thought I told you to keep an eye on them?"

"Can't. The network's down," he said as he watched the animatronic turn and stump away. The moment was… human. He didn't want to think about how that made him feel, so he shut the blinds.

Eric frowned. "That's…"

"A disaster waiting to happen?"

"Put more eloquently than I had in mind." He pushed one of the cabinets aside to make a little nook for himself to sit in, then found a few sturdy boxes that made for a functional enough chair when stacked. They scrunched when he sat down, but held. He leaned back and stretched his stiff leg out with a click and a sigh of obvious relief. "But I suppose there's nothing to be done about it."

The hourglass was still turning, turning, waiting for a solution that would never come. Neither of them could leave the office now. Ash never realised how much he liked knowing where everyone was at all times until that privilege was taken from him—it was an itch he couldn't scratch.

He didn't like this, feeling… blind.

"I'll be the judge of that." The tiles were hard on his hands and knees, and cold. Crawling and sneezing his way through the dust and cobwebs under his desk revealed that the computer had wired internet, as he suspected, and the cable was still plugged in at the back. He followed its length, checking for any signs of hungry and adventurous mice, all the way to where it disappeared into the wall.

It had to be the servers. Where did they even keep them? He was certain that he'd been round the whole building at this point, but couldn't remember seeing any.

"I wish I could say that this was unexpected." Drawers opened, rattled and closed behind him. "But this wouldn't be the first time I've had to while away the hours. Good thing I'm well prepared—damn it, I know there's some board games in here somewhere—"

But Ash was only half listening as he got back to his feet. His mind ticked and turned, and strayed unbidden to thoughts of legal blackmail, to all those forgotten names and faces who came before. To Eric, trapped here against his will, and the look on his face as he watched his dreams crumble in his hands. And to the tablet gathering covert footage under the keyboard.

With the security cameras out of action, it wouldn't find much in the way of evidence. And without evidence he hadn't a leg to stand on in court. The rational part of his brain told him that he had plenty of time, that he could go and fix the server in the morning and one night would make no difference. But the emotional part fixated on the image of Carver's face, sneering at him as she tore down his father's memory.

"Where are the servers kept?" He blurted, realising a second too late that his boss had in fact been talking.

Eric gaped at him, halfway through digging a battered game of Monopoly—Doctor Who edition—out of the bottom drawer of the cabinet behind him. "Ash, you can't be serious. Are you thinking of going out there?"

"I'm just asking a question."

The response was about as lukewarm as he expected. He threw him a wary glance from the corner of narrowed eyes as he tugged the lid from the box and released a very confused moth into the light of the lamps. "It's in the supply closet by the staff room, behind one of the racks—which, by the way, is a dead end and if the animatronics corner you in there, there's no way out. Or we could do the _smart_ thing and stay in here where it's safe. Oh… some of the hotels appear to be missing."

"In the closet?" Ash gaped. "You keep servers in a _closet?"_ No wonder they weren't working! They needed airflow to stay cool, and all the dust and lint would wreak havoc on the fans, and—he pinched the bridge of his nose and suppressed the urge to sigh. No, no, Eric wouldn't understand. He didn't use his laptop for anything more than Word, Outlook and Internet Explorer. "Say we do the smart thing, and an unexpected 'visitor' decides tonight is the night to steal all the arcade tokens?"

"Then we do what we always do, and turn on our patented incredibly loud alarm that frightens off even the most hardened of criminals," came the answer as he dealt out the money, his tone mild, "and call the police in the morning."

"Yeah, but without the cameras, if someone comes in anywhere other than the front door we'll have no idea. They'll be eaten alive." Ash shuddered at the memory of what he saw inside Freddy's mouth. "Literally."

Eric shifted uncomfortably, and there was a noticeable pause before he started sorting through the fifties, but he said nothing.

Well, that settled that. But Ash decided he'd had his fill of other people's nonsense for the week and was in no mood to listen. He ignored him as his eyes scanned the room, searching for something, anything, that would help. Soon enough they landed on a ceiling panel that wasn't quite sitting properly in its frame. "What's up there?"

"I thought we came to an agreement."

"I'm just asking a—"

He threw down the money with a huff. "Damn it, you made me lose count. There's nothing up there, just rotting insulation. The electricians go up to fix the wiring sometimes." With that he resumed his counting, and realised too late that he'd said the complete wrong thing.

"So, hypothetically, I should be able to get anywhere in the building in complete safety until I pop out a tile and drop down."

"Yes," said Eric miserably.

The plan was simple. Following the floor plan they found in one of the many cabinets, a locked one that required one of Eric's keys—Ash made a mental note of this—he would make his way to the supply closet and lift out a panel before carefully climbing down the shelves. The door should be shut and locked, and that was the only real reason the scheme might work at all. The animatronics, Eric said, were drawn to light and sound. They knew that people couldn't see in the dark. As long as he kept the light off and didn't so much as squeak, they would have no real reason to assume there was anyone inside a locked closet with only one door.

"I still can't reach it," Ash said as his fingers fell just short of the loose panel.

"If you can't get to it while sitting on my shoulders," Eric groused, but straightened up as much as his bones would allow. His knee wobbled dangerously, "I don't know how you expect to climb down without me. Thank goodness you're so light."

"Got it!" It lifted free easily, no more than painted foam board, and he pushed it to one side as he flashed a light into the space beyond. The way the darkness pushed back against it, reluctant to move out of the way… it was the darkness of a confined space. His throat closed in around quickening breath. He would not be able to stand up once in its grasp.

"Having second thoughts?"

"N—no!" If there was one motive that could force him into this tomb shaft of fluff and cobwebs, it was spite. He had to do this just to prove that he could. To Eric, and himself. The dark wouldn't rule him.

He didn't like the way the beams creaked as he scrambled into the hole. He liked the stench of must and rot even less. Kneeling there in the dust and the dark, he tried to gather his thoughts, but every breath tickled at his throat. Light seeping between the panels beneath him cut through the blackness, but it wasn't enough to keep its weight from pressing down on his heart. It beat faster and faster.

"I—I'm okay." He felt blindly above his head, fingers sinking into glass wool. Something scuttled over his knuckles and he tugged his hand away with a yelp.

Breathe. Just breathe. He could do this.

He tested the next panel over, decided very quickly that he didn't trust them with his weight, and mapped out a course over the beams instead, studying the floor plan by flashlight as he went. One hand after the other knee, slowly, slowly. Wiring glinted as he passed. Here and there, loose insulation would brush at the top of his head and he tried to ignore the way it felt like the darkness itself was reaching out to touch him.

Just breathe.

It was with great relief that he came at last to the spot he wanted. Lifting out a panel revealed that he managed to stay true to direction, even in the gloom; his flashlight picked out the outlines of shelving, standing shoulder to shoulder beneath him. They hardly looked sturdy, but he didn't wait. The moment he spotted the closed door on the edge of the circle of light, he pulled away from the cobwebs, the dark, the clutching hands that whispered 'little star', and swung his feet over the edge and onto the first shelf.

Squeak.

Ash froze, listened, and stepped again. Squeak. He heard shuffling feet somewhere outside but they didn't approach the door. Something clattered onto the tiles in the break room. Biting his lip, now, he shimmied down the last two shelves and onto the floor. A carpet of dust muffled his footsteps as he crept over to the corner Eric mentioned, where, now the silence of night had fallen, the whine of stricken hardware was plain to hear. Lights blinked at him in a panic, a voiceless cry for help.

Tugging clods of filth from the air intakes brought them some respite. But it didn't fix the root of the problem, and there was yet more to be done. His fingers itched with the desire to open the case and clean every last component with compressed air. It would have to wait for another time. The best he could hope for was that a diagnostic scan and reboot would keep them running for the rest of the night.

Except that he had to leave his tablet under the keyboard and hope like hell that Eric wouldn't find it.

Last time he did this, the dark found him. Maybe it would find him again and come to take him away. He didn't know why that was important, or why it frightened him. Adults weren't afraid of the dark.

Breathe in, breathe out. He grounded any static he picked up from his attic crawl, then brushed his fingers against the rails. None of the parts moved, but he could see them, see the way they each fitted together and how their energy flowed from one to another. His light revealed everything. And it revealed him.

Footsteps thumped to a halt outside the door. Adults weren't afraid of the dark—but they were afraid of what lurked in it.

 **I see you.**

There, he could see it! The wires took him by the hand and led him in, showed him the part that was broken. Overheated components that had burnt out in rack three. He wouldn't be able to fix it, not tonight, but he could switch it off, reroute the others so they—

Something tried the doorhandle. He was dimly aware of it, somewhere far away beyond the black talons slowly wrapping around his arms—then the circuits and wires let him go and he was on his knees, staring down at ugly carpet. His chest burned and he sucked in forgotten breath with a gasp.

The rattling stopped. Then the door jumped in its frame under the blow of a fist.

No! His legs trembled under him as he threw himself back onto his feet and at the servers and yanked the cable from the back of the third rack. He should've turned it off first, he knew he should, but there was no time. His hands fumbled on the cables. Rack two into four… he'd have to hard reset. But he was already running to the shelves before the board was even green, just as the door ripped free and bounced off the wall.

"H—h—hey kids! It—it's your best pal B—Bonnie the—"

Blunt fingers scrabbled for his ankle, but it was thin and slipped through them. Steel bit into his hand as he grabbed hold and pulled himself up onto a shelf. Then another. Where was the panel he came down through, he swore it was—

"It's m—me y—your best friend!" Lumbering weight hit the shelving, trying to knock him from its top. No time! He blindly lashed out above him and knocked out a panel that cracked over Bonnie's head. It gave him the split second longer he needed to grab for the edge and scramble through the hole. Any longer, and he would still have been there when the whole unit went toppling over.

But he couldn't stop to think about that. He was already crawling back over the beams when he heard his flashlight shatter under trampling feet and his world went black.

 **Show me.**

 **Show me more.**

Something touched his arms. Cobwebs? No, claws. Gentle, ushering, tugging him back down into the wires. He kicked out and screamed and it covered his mouth. Pinned down his arms. Dragged him down—

A hand, a metal one, caught him around the wrist. And it pulled him out, scrabbling on steel, and he clung to it like a drowning child to a lifeguard.

He was in a vent. Light filtered through the grate on his left. Below, a room that tugged at memories not quite forgotten, peeling wallpaper and puddles of water on the flagstones. Something moved in the space, between the light and the shadow, and a familiar song tinkled merrily over the crash of its feet. It was hunting, yanking open doors. Looking for him.

The hand was still on his wrist. Don't look, he told himself. Don't, _don't—_

It belonged to a grotesque jumble of parts, five limbs, three jaws hinged in the wrong places with cables spilling freely from within. Another hand pressed a frayed yellow plush of a rabbit to its chest, and another, its finger to what passed for lips.

He told himself not to look, didn't he? He knew he couldn't stop the scream. Terror wrenched his hand from its grip and he scrambled backwards down the vent, anything to get away.

And then the metal gave way beneath him and he was falling. The hunting wolf of metal bones turned. He saw the second set of teeth in its jaws as it lunged.

He hit the floor and there was no water, no vent. Flat on his back and staring up at where a panel once was, dust and plaster raining down after him, and Freddy charging down the hallway.

"T—he restaurant is closed, it's time t—t—to go home!"

Everything hurt. Muscles shrieked as Ash rolled and forced himself back onto his feet. The office was there, right there. He could see the door. It swung open and a long arm dragged him in by the front of his shirt. For a second he couldn't recognise Eric's face, and he swore it was another Freddy looking back at him with empty eyes.

Maybe he passed out in the crawlspace and this was all a fever dream.

"That's not the way you were supposed to come down!" Eric pushed him across the office at the desk and slammed the door, bracing himself against the force that hit it from the other side. Yet he held, his broken bones against merciless steel. "Ash, the bars!" His features twisted in a grimace as his heels scrabbled for purchase but steadily scraped across the tiles, inch by painful inch. "ASH!"

He limped for the red button. Not even the hiss and clank of the hydraulics pushing into place brought him relief, stopped the shaking in his limbs.

"Ashley?"

It wasn't until Freddy stopped banging on the door that he finally let himself cry.


	16. CANCELLED

**Hey guys, this is just to let you all know that I'm officially ending this draft of the story. I wanted to write at least one more chapter but I just can't keep forcing out a draft that's no longer current, especially when I don't actually get any feedback on them that would help with the new version. The current plan is to upload version two on FF's sister site, Fictionpress. I will be stripping the story of FNAF characters and locations so that it's a 'FNAF inspired story' rather than a fanfic, and working to correct the plot holes and pacing issues.**

 **I also want to clarify that this is unrelated to Scott cancelling the next FNAF game, and that I've actually been intending to do this for a while now and didn't initially have the guts to end it, for fear of disappointing people. The new draft will be a MUCH better story and still freely available, so no one's really missing out in the long run.**

 **I hope those of you who have been reading this will follow me over to the new version, and if you have any thoughts or feedback I'd love to hear it! I'm aware of most of the flaws that need fixing but more feedback always helps.**


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